Read an Excerpt
Your Story in the Stars
Using Astrology to Uncover the Hidden Narrative of Your Life
By Trish MacGregor St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2003 Trish MacGregor
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-13477-6
CHAPTER 1
STORIES AS EMPOWERMENT
A beautifully told story is a symphonic unity in which structure, setting, characters, genre, and idea meld seamlessly.
— Robert McKee, Story
If you had a crystal ball, what might it look like?
The first image that probably comes to mind is the typical crystal ball associated with gypsies, as round as a globe and made of plain, transparent glass. With this type of crystal ball, the gypsy or crooked little woman in the fortune-teller's tent leans in close, gazing into the depths of glass and light, seeking images or colors or faces or whatever it is that speaks to her about you. Long life, health, and happiness, she says, and you roll your eyes and if you're smart, not long after that you get up and leave.
There are other types of crystal balls that aren't shaped like globes or made of glass or crystal and that, well, have some substance to them. We call them oracles, and they're the oldest predictive device on the planet. Nearly every culture, from the Celtics to the Cubans, has used oracles. The ancient Greeks had their Delphic oracle; the ancient Chinese had the I Ching. The Haitians have their voodoo priests and priestesses; the Hopi Indians have shamans; the Mayas, Babylonians, and ancient Chaldeans had astrology.
Of these, the I Ching and astrology are actual symbolic systems that anyone can learn. Both systems are based on thousands of years of observation and experimentation. Even though neither system is "scientific" in the way that science is currently defined, both possess an intuitive order and cohesion that is readily apparent to anyone who learns the symbolism.
In the I Ching, the symbols consist of sixty-four hexagrams based on complex mathematics. In astrology, the symbols consist of signs, planets, and aspects or the geometric angles that the planets form to each other. Over the centuries, various kinds of astrology have evolved. This book deals with predictive astrology based on transits or the daily movement of the planets and their effect on your natal sun — that is, your sun sign. This is the type of astrology at work when you open your daily newspaper to the horoscope section and run your finger down the columns, looking for your astrological fortune cookie for the day.
Some days, that fortune cookie doesn't amount to much more than what the gypsy says as she leans over her crystal ball. But other times, the information is specific enough to your life so that you're taken aback. Where'd that come from? How'd the astrologer know that? Transits, that's how. The daily motion of the planets is the most personal and immediate predictive device in astrology.
The beauty of this type of astrology is that anyone can learn it without devoting twenty years to studying it. The secret lies in the "story line" that is revealed as the daily motion of the planets influences your sun sign, your primal pattern.
Astrologically speaking, your sun sign represents the protagonist in a story, and the transiting planets symbolize secondary characters who enter the picture, plots, and subplots that unfold over the course of a given period of time. Once you learn the symbolism, the story is easy to read.
In his memoir, On Writing, Stephen King pinpoints Mother's Day 1973 as the day he found out that the paperback rights to Carrie had just been sold for $400,000. King was to get half of that. This event didn't just transform King's career; it transformed his life. In August of that same year, his mother died. This is the power of a Pluto transit to your sun, which in King's case was close to a conjunction with his Virgo sun. It gave him wealth and took away his mother. Pluto symbolizes profound transformation and any time it conjuncts your sun sign by transit, some aspect of your life will be profoundly changed.
This doesn't mean that everyone who experiences this aspect can expect wealth and the death of a parent. It's just one possible expression and depends to a large extent on what you have been doing in your life before you experience the transit. And since we don't live in a social vacuum, your experience of the transit also depends on what's going on in the lives of the people around you.
Another woman, who was going through a Pluto transit to her sun, was asleep one night when gas began to leak somewhere in her house. She was near death when a friend found her and rushed her outside. That's another possible plot with a Pluto transit (and not one that you're likely to find in a newspaper horoscope!).
In the 2000 presidential election, the planet Mercury, which represents communication, was moving retrograde — an apparent backward motion that often results in communication snafus — at the time the networks announced that Al Gore had won Florida. About ten minutes after Mercury switched directions and began to move forward again, the networks announced that Gore hadn't won Florida. This is typical of what happens when Mercury changes directions. If you know ahead of time when a Mercury transit is going to affect your sun sign, you can prepare for it. It's best not to sign contracts or make travel plans under a Mercury retrograde. It's also best not to schedule elections under a Mercury retrograde!
Once you understand the symbolism of the planets and the aspects, you can be your own astrologer. You can see something beneficial as it approaches and prepare yourself to take full of advantage of it. Or you can see a risky period as it approaches and prepare yourself for that. In either case, you're informed. If you're informed, you can act. If you can act, you're empowered. And that's really what this kind of astrology is about: self-empowerment.
Stories and Solar Archetypes
Good movies, like good stories, have recognizable themes. Their archetypes speak to us. Star Wars is ultimately about the father/son relationship. E. T. is about love and compassion. The Sixth Sense is about life and death and alternative realities. Good stories, like good movies, are a delight to astrologers because they usually encompass an astrological archetype, symbolized by the sun signs.
Take the movie Gladiator. Times are brutal, life is savage, war is all there is. The gladiator himself, Russell Crowe, is fearless, strong, independent, a true warrior. And beneath all that courage beats the heart of a man with a passion for life. This is pure Aries, the sign ruled by Mars, the god of war. (And sure enough, Crowe is an Aries.)
In the movie The Gift, Cate Blanchette plays a Southern psychic who comes up against the closed-minded establishment when she helps a cop on a murder case. This movie has strong water sign themes — notably mystical Pisces and transformative Scorpio.
Sleepless in Seattle fits the Gemini and Libra archetypes — Gemini for the communication themes and chameleonlike characters and Libra for the love theme.
Both the book and the movie version of The Firm entail Capricorn themes about ambition — how ambition can corrupt, destruct, or collapse into unmitigated greed. This doesn't mean that every Capricorn is corrupt, but every Capricorn is ambitious in some area of his or her life.
By now, just about everyone in the universe has heard of Harry Potter. So what is it about the boy wizard that is so incredibly appealing to both kids and adults alike? It's not just Harry and Hermione and Hogwarts. It's the world they inhabit and the worldview they come to embrace, a Sagittarian (truth seeker, foreign society or place) archetype. But the idea that magic can be taught within a school setting, according to ancient codes and rules, encompasses Gemini (learning, communication) and Capricorn (structure) archetypes. Rowling didn't stop there. The books have a few other solar archetypes mixed in: Aquarius for the visionary aspects of the stories, Scorpio for the deep transformation that Harry himself undergoes, and Pisces for the mystical and magical qualities of the stories and characters.
In the Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood's dark portrayal of a future society in which most women are chattel used for procreation, Scorpio (transformation) and Cancer (nurturer, the mother, emotions, the womb) archetypes emerge as the strongest themes. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's classic tale of a totalitarian society in which books are burned, the most prevalent themes are Gemini (books), Sagittarius (foreign society or place), and Capricorn (authority).
Stephen King's books seem to swing from things that go bump in the night (Salem's Lot, The Shining, Christine) to childhood angst (Hearts in Atlantis, Stand by Me) to other worlds and realities (The Dreamcatcher, Green Mile, The Black Tower). It's impossible to assign just one solar archetype to each grouping because the characters themselves, the events they experience, and the emotions they feel span the spectrum from Aries to Pisces.
But King brings the archetypal energy of his sun sign to every book he writes — he's a Virgo, the Perfectionist and Analyst. When he creates a story, you are usually there, breathing the air of the 1950s or hearing the music of the 1960s. You are nostalgic (Cancer) for bygone days, scared of what you can sense but can't see (Scorpio, Pisces), enraged, saddened, and caught up in the antics of his heroes (Leo).
You get the idea. Our favorite books and movies are stories with strong archetypal themes. In the table below, key words are provided for each sun sign archetype. In the activity section that follows, list your top five favorite books or movies and the archetypal theme that fits each one.
Sun Sign Archetypes
SUN SIGN ARCHETYPE
Aries
Warrior and Pioneer
Taurus
Realist and Sensualist
Gemini
Communicator and Networker
Cancer
Nurturer and Intuitive
Leo
Actor and Hero
Virgo
Perfectionist and Analyst
Libra
Artist and Mediator
Scorpio
Alchemist and Detective
Sagittarius
Traveler and Truth Seeker
Capricorn
Achiever and Strategist
Aquarius
Innovator and Visionary
Pisces
Mystic and Healer
ACTIVITY:
* * *
Your Favorite Stories
List five of your favorite books or movies, along with their dominant solar archetypes. You may want to do this in a journal you can use specifically for the various activities in this book.
Your Natal Chart
Even though you don't need your natal chart to use the information in this book, its worthwhile to have one done. You can get a computerized copy of your natal chart from most New Age bookstores for about five dollars. If you have access to the Internet, there are several good sites that offer free natal charts. You'll need your exact time of birth.
One of the best sites for free natal charts belongs to astrologer Jan Spiller: www.cosmicpath.com. At http://astro-software.com you get a chart and a brief analysis. The wheel used on the site is somewhat difficult to read, however. You can also try: http://0800-horoscope.com/birthchart.html or www.1horoscope.com/natal_lite.html.
CHAPTER 2
SOLAR STORY LINES
A coughing chuckle filled his throat. He turned and leaned against the wall as he swallowed the pills. Full circle, he thought, while the final lethargy crept into his limbs. Full circle. A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend.
— Richard Matheson, I am Legend
Sun-sign story lines are simple, but they aren't always obvious. I recently attended an alternative health seminar given by Eric Pearl, a former chiropractor. I had read Pearl's book, The Reconnection: Heal Others, Heal Yourself, and was intrigued by his personal story.
For twelve years, he ran a successful chiropractic practice in Los Angeles. One day in 1993 his patients began reporting that they felt Eric's hands on them even though he hadn't touched them physically. Then his patients began to report miraculous healings from cancer, AIDS-related diseases, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, birth disfigurements, and other serious afflictions. His healings have been documented in five books and have elicited interest from physicians and medical researchers. Pearl's exploration of this ability eventually led him to conclude that anyone can tap into the energy he uses when these healings occur. So a friend and I attended the two-day workshop to learn how to do this.
I wasn't sure what to expect of this guy and was really puzzled when he first came out onto the stage to greet the two hundred attendees of the workshop. With his biting wit and casual, irreverent manner, he had the audience in the palm of his hand within two minutes. A Leo, I figured, a born actor who worked the audience like a pro. But over the course of the weekend, as Pearl directed two hundred people through personal and immediate experience with this healing energy, I changed my mind several times. If he wasn't a Leo, then he had to be one of the other fire signs, a Sagittarius or an Aries, truth seeker or pioneer. Of course, I could have done the obvious thing and asked Pearl himself what sign he was, but by then I was determined to figure it out on my own.
During the breaks, I talked to people who claimed to have been healed by Pearl. One man had been diagnosed with throat cancer the year before and the doctors had given him just a few months to live. His daughter told him about Pearl and he flew out to Los Angeles for a healing. After two sessions, he flew home again and his doctors told him the tumor had shrunk enough so that they could operate. Just as important, the man's excruciating pain had disappeared. He subsequently went through chemo and radiation and is now cancer free. He attributes his initial healing to Pearl.
Another man had had a valve in his heart replaced and couldn't walk more than a few hundred feet without stopping to rest. The day after he was reconnected, he walked three miles. Mainstream medical thinking says these kinds of healings can't happen. Yet I experienced this tangible energy during the workshop so I knew it wasn't phony. But I still couldn't figure out Pearl's sun sign.
Finally, on Sunday evening when the workshop was over, I asked his assistant what sign he was. "Oh, he's a Scorpio."
Well, hey, of course, dumb me. It made perfect sense. What could be more Scorpio than a mysterious healing energy that transforms bodies and lives at the deepest levels?
The story lines — the archetypes — of the sun signs are straightforward. But because we are complex creatures, they find expression in many ways. Each sign is grouped according to its element and its quality or modality, and these two groupings are an intimate part of every sign's story line.
The Elements
We learned about them in grade school, the four cornerstones of physical existence: fire, earth, air, and water. In astrology, the elements describe the basic energy of the signs. The element that rules your sign explains not only your temperament but also the primary thrust of your story line. Are you more intuitive than action oriented? You're probably a water sign. Do you love ideas? You're probably an air sign.
Read on.
Under each element heading is the title of a book or movie with a story line that fits that element.
Fire: Aries, Leo, Sagittarius
Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel
Years ago (and I'm probably dating myself here), there was a group of comedians who called themselves The Fire Sign Theater. They used an old-time radio show format for their routines, and I remember sitting around listening to their albums and howling with laughter. Everyone in the group was supposedly a fire sign, and whether they were or not, the energy they radiated was pure fire — creative, pioneering, impulsive, completely original.
Fire sign people are dynamic, action oriented, enthusiastic, and completely spontaneous. When they're angry, you know it. When they're happy, you know that, too. They are natural leaders, do their best work independently, and love being the center of attention. Their natural warmth attracts other people, and they never lack for friends and companionship. They excel at launching projects and trends.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Your Story in the Stars by Trish MacGregor. Copyright © 2003 Trish MacGregor. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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