Samples taken from pro-bono clients (names are kept anonymous).
Sample 1 (synastry reading)
I’ll start with the moon signs, since those are pretty important in synastry. Good news is you guys have great moon sign compatibility by both sign and overlay, which is where your moons fall in the other person’s chart. Are you using an accurate birth time for [redacted] by chance? Let me know if you are and I’ll know whether or not I should include where your planets fall in his houses, but for now I’ll leave that out as a factor.
His moon in Aquarius puts it in your 7th house again, a pretty strong attraction point, as you remember before when I said [redacted]’s sun falls on your 7th house cusp. His style of relating emotionally is very good for you. With [redacted], it was in the 3rd house of your chart, so communicating about emotions might have been more direct with him than with [redacted], but [redacted]’s emotional impact on you is overall more significant in a positive way. I say “positive” because I now have the context that Jonathan became a progressively more abusive person over time.
As an aside, there are some specific asteroids that can help act as “red flags” for relationships. Nessus and Prey are two good ones. If someone’s Nessus asteroid makes a tight aspect to one of your personal planets, or your Prey asteroid, it can be a strong indicator of an abusive relationship. Nessus is the abuse asteroid, and I’m pretty sure it’s in the list of additional objects you can select when making charts on astro.com.
Anyway, looking at the lunar nodes, you guys have them in the same sign, Cancer, which is pretty cool. It means your evolutionary goals are pretty similar in essence, which is giving and receiving emotional support and feeling “safe.” Moons in the same element (air) work very well for finding this in each other. His north node is in your 12th house, which can make his place in your life feel rather unclear at times, but ultimately will be a factor in your soul’s growth, if he hasn’t been already.
This isn’t all easy though, because your Mars also squares his north node. Squares to Mars often indicate sexual tension, but also are stressors in a relationship. Yours is in Libra, which is unfortunately where Mars is viewed as “in detriment;” meaning its energy is most poorly expressed here. Libra is naturally diplomatic, tactful, harmonious, and peace-loving, while Mars is…well, the Roman god of war, so none of those things. In your 3rd house of communication, it can make someone very indecisive, and not at all good at asserting their needs verbally. It can also make a person passive aggressive when communicating frustration. None of this is conducive to [redacted]’s need in this lifetime to feel nurtured, so it is important for you to be more direct with him. When you emailed him to ask how he was doing, and tell him he’s on your mind, did you tell him how you really feel? If you’re sorry about how you ended things, maybe tell him that…however it is you are really feeling, I think it’s important to tell him that. The worst case scenario is that he ignores you, which it sounds like he might already be doing.
I see he has Mars in Scorpio, which can make a very intense person! He probably has a high sex drive and also pursues what he wants with the intense drive and relentlessness of a Scorpio, which can borderline on obsessive. Interestingly it’s opposite your Chiron. This can be a dangerous placement, in that the way he handles conflict will hurt you emotionally. He might find you too sensitive to that, and you might find him too cruel. This could very well be referring to how he hasn’t made contact with you since you reached out. Scorpio Mars is the type to either seek revenge or cut people out entirely, when faced with a conflict. It’s NOT a placement to get on the bad side of. It also falls in your 4th house, which is a very sensitive spot. 4th house is our domestic life, not just our physical home and family life, but where we retreat privately within ourselves to feel safe…like a turtle retreating into its shell. This potential wounding I mentioned is amplified in this placement.
You also have the same Chiron in Taurus, which means you have the same kinds of emotional wounds tied around feeling insecure in your self-worth and stable in your lives. Did [redacted] seem aware that you two were having strain or problems when you ended things with him, like maybe he saw it coming, or did he seem very surprised when things ended?
You guys have a “double whammy” with moon trine Saturn (reciprocated both ways) which is a great aspect for longevity. Positive aspects to Saturn are a great aspect for any relationship, since Saturn is the planet of “staying power.”
His Venus is in your first house, which means that physically he is of course very attracted to you. Your Neptune also trines his Venus, which creates this “rose-colored glasses” filter that he has of you. It’s probable that he is still very attracted to you even now, which makes it all the more painful for him that you ended things with him.
But his Neptune is also opposite your moon. With this, that blinded-by-love aspect exists again, but on an emotional level. The problem with the opposition here is that you might be holding him to unreasonably high emotional standards. Your moon is naturally in your 11th house, house of friendship. It’s very important to you to feel emotionally connected to your friends. You might find it’s very hard for him to maintain a friendship after the falling out you’ve had. Or, you guys will salvage the friendship, but he’s not going to be the same person he was when you were together before. Well, he’ll be the same person, but your perception of him will change. You will probably see sides of him that you didn’t see before, and there will have to be a period of you reconciling any skewed perceptions you have about him with the reality of these facets you didn’t see before. I think I asked this earlier in this write up, but is this chart using his accurate birth time by chance?
Sample 2 (personal reading)
Your Mercury, how you communicate and learn, is in your 3rd house, which on its own is a great placement, since Mercury rules the 3rd house (house of communication and learning). The issue here is that it falls in an intercepted sign.
I’ll explain that in case you’re unfamiliar. If you look at your chart, you’ll see that the dividing lines for each house, aka the house cusps, are not evenly spaced apart. Some houses are much bigger than others, which is pretty normal. Most charts are like that. You’ll see that the dividing lines each land within the range of a certain sign, which determines which sign the house is ruled by in your chart. In your case, the 3rd house is ruled by Aquarius, but you’ll notice that very little of Aquarius actually takes up that space. The entire Pisces sign is in there, though, meaning none of the house cusp lines land on Pisces. It’s basically swallowed in the 3rd house and that’s what I mean by intercepted. Any planet that falls in an intercepted sign is going to have some challenges. Additionally, Pisces is considered the weakest placement for Mercury.
I am not saying you are in anyway “mentally challenged” or “stupid;” in fact, my spouse actually has nearly this same placement (Mercury in intercepted Pisces, but in his first house) and it doesn’t hinder his intelligence even slightly. He’s actually the most intelligent person I’ve ever met. I’m not necessarily attributing that to his Mercury placement on its own, I’m just saying it’s not anything that detracts from intelligence.
Planets in intercepted signs can be thought of as untapped potential energy. Your ability to communicate effectively is blocked. You also have Saturn in nearly the same place. Saturn has a tendency to delay what it touches, making things more of a struggle and feel like an uphill battle at times. Saturn conjunct Mercury is found in people who feel stifled in communicating. Mars sitting in here, intercepted, very close to Saturn, and in Pisces, would make for someone who can’t assert themselves easily. Pisces is also a weak placement for Mars, since Mars is all about how we assert ourselves and take action, and our drive to do things. And Pisces is very passive and unassuming, and receptive. But Mars being close to Mercury combines the mental energy of Mercury with the restless/impatient nature of Mars, giving racing thoughts that aren’t easily expressed.
Since house cusps are naturally symmetrical, anyone with 1 intercepted sign will have 2, the sign opposite of it. So in your case, Virgo. While your Moon is in Leo, it’s the very final degree of Leo, right on the house cusp of Virgo, which means you will still feel some of that intercepted influence on your Moon, just not as strongly as your Mercury/Saturn/Mars. So that would create an emotional block as well and trouble with emotional communication. Moon in the 9th signifies someone with strong emotional ties to their value system, which you may hold in higher regard than anything else in your life, but often don’t feel safe or comfortable sharing those views. Chiron in intercepted Virgo reinforces this. Chiron represents unhealed trauma, an emotional scar you carry through this lifetime that probably began in childhood (or, if you believe in it, from a past life). You might have problems with communicating clearly because of some trauma of being criticized (Virgo) for your personal beliefs, and also because you are too critical of your own beliefs, second guessing yourself and over-analyzing them. Virgo is famous for these things. It might be that these matters are so important to you that you feel you have to express them perfectly and precisely as a Virgo would, but your mind, if you let it express naturally, is very intuitive and more “big-picture” oriented.
The next point to cover is your North Node. That represents your purpose/mission/karmic lesson in this lifetime. It’s very close to Pluto in your chart, and in the 12th house. This is known as a very “karmic” placement. That big red rectangle in the middle of your chart is the challenging relationships formed between your Moon/Chiron, Saturn/Mercury, and Pluto/NN. The apex of the triangle is pretty much a big arrow pointing to the biggest challenge of your life, and it’s pointing at your Pluto/NN. The 12th house represents the unconscious, the spiritual world, dreams, illusion, addiction, and unconditional love. Also, secrets, self-undoing, and past lives.
So, with the NN/Pluto here, forming the triangle’s apex, your life purpose is going to be more of a challenge than it might be for other people. Pluto is about transformation, tearing things down and becoming reborn, and finding deeper truth. These are things you must find within yourself and could most easily be described as “soul searching.” There may be some part of you within yourself that you have been consciously or subconsciously avoiding that you need to address in this lifetime.
The house directly opposite of the apex is also affected by the struggles of where the “arrow” points. In this case that’s the 6th house, which is the house of service to others, cooperation, the work place, routine, and physical health. Because you have not filled this mission of yours, all the problems from the planets we’ve talked about naturally bleed out into your work life.
Usually the build-in solution to how to deal with challenging triangles is to look for planets that form harmonious relationships with the planets involved in the triangle. And the solution for how to deal with intercepted signs lies inside the signs that are duplicated in your chart. Since 2 signs in your chart (Pisces and Virgo) don’t rule over any house, that means 2 other signs have to work double-duty. For you, those are Aries and Libra. We start by looking at the planets in those double-duty signs. Since Libra is empty, you would instead use the ruling planet of Libra, which is Venus. Venus is, conveniently, in your other double-duty sign, Aries. The sun is also there. Even more conveniently, Venus and the sun also both each satisfy a point on that tricky triangle; Venus forms a harmony aspect with your Leo Moon, and the Sun forms one with your Pluto/NN.
So, the keys for solving your dilemma are in your Sun and Venus. Venus here means you value your privacy very much and probably need a home environment that is uniquely beautiful to you. Do you have any artistic tendencies? Venus is also a planet of visual artistic expression, and having some private environment where you can achieve that could relieve some restless energy, recharge your mental battery, and give you some new perspective on life in general, which could open the blocked pathways of your intercepted planets. Alternatively, physical activity could be another answer. Aries Sun signs naturally have a ton of pent up energy, and the mind is of course strongly tied to the body. So when you’re not getting this energy out in a releasing way, it flows into your mind and clouds everything.
Even if you feel like you don’t have boundless energy, finding some kind of physical outlet would probably do you a world of good, if you don’t do that already. If your job is very physical, that doesn’t really count…those don’t tend to be stress-relieving. You would probably find that a form of exercise that’s enjoyable to you would actually give you more energy than just collapsing at the end of a workday. As for Venus, even if you’re not artistically inclined, it could be as simple as creating space in your home that relaxes and calms you. We are very much affected by our environment, and this has been backed by numerous studies in things like color theory and interior design. It’s why prisons are designed a certain way, schools another, hospitals another, shopping malls another, spas another…it’s all about creating a certain energy for the inhabitants to absorb and influence their behavior.
Sample 3 (past life couple reading)
You and this person have some mutual contacts to each other’s vertex axes. The vertex axis is considered a fated point of the chart, a gateway between this life and others, so it’s pretty indicative of a past life connection. His chart ruler Neptune is conjunct your Vertex and the ruler of your descendant, Saturn, is conjunct his vertex so to me that sounds like you knew each other before.
His vertex is in his 7th house so it could have been you 2 were married. He has his own Saturn retrograde in his chart which usually means he has some heavy karmic burden he’s carrying from his past life. Your Juno is conjunct that retrograde Saturn. Juno is the marriage asteroid, so that is another indicator of a past life marriage.
There is definitely some kind of past life karma you guys have together and on a metaphysical level he might be showering you with affection because of a spiritual debt he owes. He has Chiron conjunct his south node in his chart, South node deals with the past life, Chiron is an asteroid of deep wounds so he probably hurt someone very badly in his last life. His SN is Aries so that might mean the pain he caused was physical, or at least it was the result of him being very selfish.
The other ruler of your descendant, Uranus, is retrograde in your chart and conjunct his Juno, so you both have conjunctions to each other’s Vertex axes and each other’s Juno asteroids so with repeating patterns like this a past life marriage is pretty likely.
With your south node in your 7th house, your life probably revolved around your marriage and you felt in some way it defined you, but you were also probably pretty restless in the marriage (because this node is in freedom loving Aquarius) and may have felt smothered by the marriage. Your Uranus is square to your south node, coming from your 4th house, so something very sudden and disruptive happened that was traumatic and shocking for you and caused a major upheaval, likely related to your home life and/or family.
Since Uranus is your south node ruler it may have been you who caused the dramatic sudden change to happen, like one day you just left the relationship suddenly after you finally couldnt stand the restriction of the relationship. You have Neptune sextile your south node, which is illusions, dreams, sometimes spiritualism, in your 5th house it could have been a love affair you were having with someone else outside of your marriage and you may have left the marriage for that.
I’m starting to put some pieces together and get a decent idea of what happened. It looks like you 2 were married and most likely had kids together, you were unhappy in the marriage, he was probably very selfish and quite possibly abusive but you were financially dependant on him. It’s also quite possible he had some kind of affair happening too, or some secret indulgence or addiction, maybe not an affair but possibly he was alcoholic or abused drugs of some kind. Something he was doing was very destructive to the marriage and pure indulgence on his part. It drove you apart and eventually you found someone else and ran off with this other person. Now he wants to make things right and make up for how he behaved as whoever he was before.
He was very successful in his career and likely wealthy, but it came at the cost of his personal life, he pretty much sacrificed that in a race to the top of the status ladder, so fixated on beating his professional competition that he was blind to the disintegration of his marriage. In that context the 12th house Venus he has sextile to his south node ruler probably was alcoholism or some other escapism behavior through intoxicants to numb himself from the pain of career pressures.
Astrotomey 