Continuing our exploration of the therapeutic potential of astrology, we’ll now turn to the Saturn archetype. Saturn is fundamental in the formation of a unique personality, an ego, or sense of separate self. In highlighting crucial turning points in the developmental process of the personal self, we’ll look at many of the key counseling dynamics possible within an astrology reading. To understand Saturn is to understand the fundamental boundaries of the personal self and therefore what is both approved of and what is pushed out of awareness. It is fundamental to creating successful therapeutic dialogue to create a safe space where the client can explore this interior material that has been denied, shamed or pushed aside.

Freud was both fascinated and vexed by the principle of limitation that seemed to capture people's sense of identity; rather as if the “wind had changed” after their childhood years, and they were left with a static personality for both good and ill. Jung spoke of the cost of creating a personal self—pushing into the shadows everything excluded from one’s experience, rather like the dark side of the Moon. In its opposition to the Moon/Cancer archetype, Saturn/Capricorn acts as the principle boundary that allows the personality to form as a distinct and separate entity. The personality is symbolized astrologically by the conditioned self (the Moon) as a focal point expressing the personal planets. It is then fashioned by the structural principle of Saturn.

Saturn symbolizes the principle of structure. This can refer to a family, a society or civilization, and to the very way that we structure our own consciousness.

Saturn bridges the experiences of the personal self and the transpersonal self. The personal self is expressed through the inner planets within the layers of the unconscious and epitomized through the conditioned self, the “I” (the Moon). The transpersonal self is held in potential by the outer planets. Saturn is a critical factor in determining the structure of our consciousness and the strength of the self, as Saturn is the mediator between personal and transpersonal worlds.
 
The Nature of the Boundary
 
The nature of boundary is critical to understanding the role of Saturn. To a disempowered self that has not yet opened up to the riches of the unconscious, and of the self as supportive parent to the “I,” the apparent boundaries of the personal self can seem all too concrete and fixed. The relationship of the personal self to the collective can appear to be set in stone until one achieves greater awareness.

Conversely, from the perspective of the outer planets—the power of the deep self, operating through the unconscious and through the developing I/Self relationship—something seemingly rigid and unmoving in fact represents an increasingly flexible and interactive opportunity. This point is developed elegantly in Ken Wilber’s book No Boundary, which describes multiple states of consciousness embedded as layers within the human psyche. Each layer is experienced as progressively reaching towards the realizations expressed most clearly by the Buddhists as the emptiness of the “ultimate identity.” This ultimate identity is actually a luminous formless awareness from which certain states arise. If we identify with those states, they appear to have boundaries and phases of expression; yet, underlying all of them is a primordial awareness within which there is no boundary.

Saturn’s Shadow
 
Donald Winnicott once defined maturity as the capacity to handle paradox. [i] To the immature psyche, life appears to be black or white. However, the increasing capacity to integrate experience reveals that life really exists in all shades of all colors. Misunderstood or un-integrated, Saturn can cast a pallid shadow over the individual life with the belief “I am right and everyone else is wrong.”
 
I have had clients stuck in a negative Saturn fantasy who fear that they are abnormal, doomed, a train wreck; one whom everyone else has overlooked. In this fantasy, everyone else is “normal,” while they believe they exist alone under a dark cloud of “wrong, sick and hopeless.”

One client, in her early thirties, had the belief that life had already passed her by. She was born with Saturn in Leo retrograde on the I.C., t-square to Jupiter and Uranus. Some people with Saturn in Leo tend toward total identification with the extremes of what they perceive as good or bad. In this polarization, life can feel amazing: the person feels especially creative and things are moving in a positive direction. And then, when there is even a slight criticism, the self-identification (Saturn/structure combined with Leo/self) with that criticism is so strong that the person experiences it as a direct attack on her self-identity, and she falls into a downward spiral of despair and often self-deprecation.

Some may take an even more drastic version of the split, believing that they are light and only other people are shadowy. One client’s father with this pattern actually refers to himself as “perfect” and this is a moniker used frequently within the family, without irony. In his work Madness Explained, clinical psychologist Richard P. Bentall shares evidence from statistical clinical surveys showing that depressed people score more highly on certain self-reflective exercises than do people who are not depressed! Bentall makes the point that the healthy individual tends towards a subtly inflated self-image. This inflation can become extreme self-delusion when one denies one’s shadow; that one can make mistakes is in evidence. A mature expression of the Saturn archetype includes an acceptance that one is not perfect, no matter how hard one tries.

The Saturn function reveals that our suffering and failings have a place in our journey towards wholeness—that in themselves, they contain the seeds of real self-knowledge. Bentall's work acknowledges that in “depressing” our ego inflation, Saturn reveals a difficult but more accurate truth. Without the capacity to face the difficult awareness of our limitations, we may become prey to the perfection delusion of the sort held by my client's father. The cost of this denial of our humanity is high. His family tries to live up to an impossible myth of following the “perfect” lead of an imperfect man. This led to alcoholism in the case of my client's sibling. My client moved to the other end of the continent in order to gain perspective and avoid a similar fate.

Blaming Fate Instead of Owning Saturn Material
 
“The roles and expectations, the shadow of Saturn, rest heavily on us all. We can continue to blame ‘them’ – those who mysteriously invented and institutionalized all of this – but then nothing will change. We can no longer wait for something to change ‘out there’ . . . we must change ourselves. All change starts within . . . but we . . . often have trouble internalizing our experience. So the task is difficult, but it is far preferable to living forever under Saturn’s shadow.” – James Hollis [ii]
 
Hollis’ point of how we attempt to offload our undeveloped Saturn function is universal. Jung observed that what we are unable to own within our conscious self will come back via our unconscious self in the form of “fate,” events in the outer world, or embodied in others.
 
One classic stance of the young idealist is to blame all the world’s woes on the “Man,” that shadowy, often corporate Wizard of Oz who manipulates the machinery of state. Now, this problem is a complex one, because as the old adage says, just because you are paranoid does not mean that they are not out to get you! So let’s hold that in mind as we look at the bigger picture. Like many other figures, Timothy Leary really was tailed by the FBI for years. What many thought was simply his “stoner paranoia” was, in fact, real. In 2012, the realization that the world’s banking system is rigged and that the world is run on “casino economics,” as Morris Berman suggests, is genuine. [iii] But to project all the unresolved issues in the world onto the bankers is psychologically naïve.

When we’re caught in Saturn’s shadow, we are unable to see our own complicity, or accept our own role in whatever plagues us. It’s much easier to point outside, to blame an enemy. But there is no one all-powerful enemy, no “Man” per se—just a lot of men and women operating within the parameters that they have set within their lives. Saturn is about taking personal responsibility. Certainly, there are difficult issues in the world that individuals and governments need to approach with integrity, letting people’s needs guide their mandates and actions. That’s part of the Saturn process—working with structures, and creating systems that offer positive support (as opposed to negative or fear-based support). But people drain energy from their personal centers of power when they blame others for the limiting conditions of their lives rather than accepting a fair share of responsibility for their lot.
 
Saturn in the Family
 
Saturn is often present in our formative experiences—childhood messages from family and schooling shape the nascent identity through our response to imposed structure and feedback, whether encouraging or problematic. In youth, we yearn for a positive expression of the Saturn archetype via parents, teachers and role models who embody authority mediated by love. Many young people search a long time for this rare quality, with potentially lifelong consequences if the need is not met.
 
In a healthy and supportive family, the child naturally wishes to stand out, to shine and experience the glow of appreciation from an appreciative audience (Leo/Sun). A friend’s 3-year-old child has, since age 2, wanted everything to be pink; she has a wardrobe of princess dresses and slip-on shoes. Her mother dresses soberly and cannot abide pink, but she supports her daughter’s self-expression. The joy in this little girl when she shows an assembled company her favorite princess outfit, tiara and all, is something to behold.

In an abusive dysfunctional family, to stand out is to become a potential target (Aquarius/Uranus opposite Leo/Sun). When being noticed results in verbal, emotional, physical or sexual abuse, there is an additional survival advantage in remaining unseen. Instead of naturally developing gifts or talents to be shared, some abused young people become masters of invisibility to minimize the survival threat from the abusive parental authority.

We can note two main types of family trauma: the intense impact event (physical violence or sexual molestation), or trauma that develops through duration or repetition. In the latter, seemingly mild verbal commentary can be harmful when reinforced over time. For example, slightly negative words about a child’s weight or intelligence, or the often-repeated family story “you got the brains while your sister got the looks.” Repetition causes the child to assume validity of the harmful message. In a worse-case scenario, both forms of trauma are combined in the form of intense impact events that are repeated routinely, which can lead to very complex and deep-seated traumatic wounding.

The tipping point for a dysfunctional family is linked to the degree of narcissistic injury present in the parent. This is based not only on the kinds of difficult childhood experience that the parents may have suffered, but also the degree to which they have been able to ameliorate that suffering through their adult relations, critically with the other parent. Much pain is inflicted on children through the failure of the parental relationship to establish and maintain a loving or even simply supportive foundation. For more insight on this dynamic, see John Bradshaw’s Bradshaw On: The Family.

Narcissistic Injury and the Impossible Dilemma

The term “narcissistic injury” refers to the level at which we have experienced a failure of care or healthy mirroring in our early childhood. Each of us has some degree of narcissistic injury from experiences when our primary caregivers failed to understand us or support our true nature. This is inevitable in even the most loving of families, and indeed, provides very useful evolutionary lessons to the developing psyche, since many environments later in life will be more hostile than the basically supportive and loving family home.

This gray area can turn into clear dysfunction when we move from unwitting failure to mirror or support the needs of a child, to a profound lack of connection with that child. Donald Winnicott used the term “good enough” for the kind of parenting that maintains enough contact with the fundamental part of the child’s identity to avoid dysfunction. When such contact is not good enough, the child is left with a near-impossible dilemma: either the parent is failing the child (which in early infancy can even lead to death since the parent at this stage is key to survival), or the child is failing to elicit the right responses from the parent.

Many children opt for internalizing the problem as “their fault” so as not to face the unbearable anxiety of the devastating parental failure.

This complex is instrumental in the creation of the idealized or false self, in which the child makes increasingly acrobatic attempts to generate the desired parental response—all the while having to deny the increasingly evident lack within the parent’s capacity to care.

The Core Saturn Wound

The failure of parental care can, in and of itself, lead to what we could term the child’s individuation crisis. The developing child must recognize that to grow as an individual, she will have to symbolically (and sometimes literally) step over the parent’s body on her path.[CCC1]  At this stage, “all progress is accompanied by guilt,” writes Bert Hellinger, the originator of Family Constellation work. This shadow is cast by the unresolved Saturn principle within the family. The parent is unable to balance authority with love and so the child faces a struggle, much of which remains unconscious, to claim her own power in a fashion mediated by love or basic compassion.

It is no surprise, then, to find that the child who is a bully at school is bullied at home. These imbalances between authority and love, the core Saturn wound, can remain operational within family systems for generations.

Even as an adult, an individual may struggle to emerge from under the shadow cast by the parent. To identify that shadow is the first step of integrating the dark side of the Saturn archetype. Key components involve shame about what was not acceptable in the parental reality and then guilt in seeking to overcome that reality. To finally emerge victorious from the influence of the parental shadow is the first real step toward individuation.

The Great Betrayal

 “Not being seen for what we truly are has led to a betrayal of this preciousness that is our essential core. We come to understand that we became false because the people in our early environment not only did not see and support our true self, but wanted us to be something else. They conditioned us to fit their idea of what we are or what we should be. The feeling of betrayal that accompanies our realization of this development is one of the ways in which we experience the narcissistic wound. We may experience the betrayal whenever we feel not seen or appreciated for who and what we are.” - A.H. Almaas [iv]

Almaas is articulating the powerful way that the pain we feel when let down by another resonates profoundly with the earliest failures in our familial relationship. If we have not done work around these issues, their symptoms can take us by surprise. A simple disconnect with someone not making eye contact while we’re talking to them could provoke a “bigger than appropriate” reaction if underlying hurts are still needing our attention.

In my therapy training I was given an exercise in which I was acting as the counselor to a colleague in a real session, with the only rule being that I was not allowed to make eye contact. My partner soon became frustrated and angry with me and refused to share any more. Even though she was fully aware of the requirements of the exercise, she could not contain her frustration, it was so triggering. Such a simple exercise, and yet so revealing.

Almaas brings a powerful spiritual insight to his analysis of the psychodynamic processes of early childhood; he observes that even within the most loving and supportive of families, there is a failure to understand the essence or spiritual core of the child. As a result, disillusionment may occur even in the most wonderful home setting when the profound depths of one’s own being are inevitably unacknowledged or sidestepped.

“We became what they wanted us to be, what they paid attention to in us… Through this process of accommodation, we abandoned and rejected what they could not see, the parts of us they did not relate to. Since our essence was the element they recognized or understood least, our essence was the central element we disowned. We ended up abandoning and hiding our most precious nature. We hid it finally from ourselves, most of us eventually forget it all together.” [v]

Furthermore, Almaas recognizes that any deep therapeutic or spiritual work requires us to re-experience those developmental failures and the hurt of the loss of relationship implicit within them, if we wish to connect with our true selves, now.

This is the struggle that we all face when we grow up—to remember our essence, our true nature, and then have the courage and integrity to live that nature; to truly be.

Saturn and the Super-ego

Saturn recycles pain to the extent that it conditions us through the repression function, with particular emphasis on the libido, the sexuality, Eros or life-joy. The threat of shame is present if these essential creative functions are expressed in a way deemed inappropriate by the “authorities” around us.

“…many of the highly valued assets of our civilization were acquired at the cost of sexuality and by the restriction of sexual motive forces.” - Sigmund Freud [vi]

Freud notes the harnessing of repression as a crucial component of empire building (the shadow of Imperialism that underpins two world wars) only a few pages after dreaming of a world where children are allowed more free play. To place such ideas in their context, we may consider the words of Jacques Barzun in From Dawn to Decadence. Here he writes on the 19^th-century relationship to sexuality and repression:

“It is . . . a mistake to think that ‘the Victorians’ in their pursuit of a purified life became blind to sexual realities. To ignore does not mean to be ignorant of; on the contrary the effort heightens awareness. Hence the verbal absurdities of 19^th Century moralism that were devised to conceal facts and drive away wrong thoughts. The body and its parts must not be mentioned; even a piano was debarred from having legs. The parallels today are the words used to conceal bodily and mental infirmities and spare their victims; it has been held that ‘hard of hearing’ is an offensive phrase.” [vii]

Putting Freud in this cultural context in which he matured, we see a world of double entendres, of hidden meanings concealing truths of a sexual nature. On this level, Freud’s opus is a guidebook to translating and revealing the era’s conventions of language and behavior to reintroduce the missing sexual components. It is no wonder that Freud appeared to be so radical when we take into account these restrictive social mores.

We can see then that this quality of policing piano legs, language, and even in principle our very private thoughts, forms the material of Freud’s super-ego. This controlling principle is at best the voice of conscience, at worst the inner dictator of consciousness given to creating a potentially punishing regimen for the ego. The Moon is astrologically opposite the voice of authority in Saturn, the Super-ego.

Crime and Punishment

Saturn relates to the societal forces that are punitive. In a pure Saturnian framework, the punishment suits the crime. Justice is “an eye for an eye.” Of course, in reality, punishment for wrongdoing is more complex. Let’s look at a story of crime and punishment that took place 400 years ago:

“It is Tuesday, 10 March 1612…a routine criminal case. An unmarried man and woman have been arrested… they are accused of having had sex together. The woman confesses. The man denies it. It does not take long to decide their fate. They are put on trial before a jury of men, interrogated and found guilty. Their punishment reflects the heinousness of their crime: not only did they have sex, they have brought into the world a bastard child. For this Susan Perry and Robert Watson are to be cut off from their homes, their friends, their families, their livelihoods – to be forever expelled from the society from which they live. The Judges order them to be taken directly ‘to the prison of the Gatehouse; and both of them to be stripped naked from the waist upwards; and so tied to the cart’s tail and to be whipped from the Gatehouse in Westminster unto Temple Bar; and then and there to be presently banished from the city.’ What happened to their baby is not recorded.” - Faramerz Dabhoiwala [viii]

Apart from the brutality—the sadistically intimate punishment and complete abandonment forced upon these two poor beings (with seemingly no care for the life their “terrible” act has produced)—what stands out most from this description and court transcripts is the routine nature of the proceedings. This is just “another day at the office” for the judges and jury.

Although we’ve evolved since then, this kind of injustice still takes place in our world. In present-day Afghanistan, a couple were recently publicly beheaded for having eloped together: in effect brutally killed for being in love. In Britain there are routine cases of “honor killings”—a recent example being a young Muslim woman raped by an uncle and then murdered by her father and brother for the “stain” her loss of virginity had brought upon the family.

Of course, the original crime lying behind many of these events is the religious one: hence, the excessive value placed on virginity as a symbol of the unblemished soul. In Christian cultures, the original crime is that of Eve’s in the garden. We are “suitably” punished then as carriers of the original sin.

These events symbolize the externally punitive impact of the distorted Saturn principle. They concern us because they carry such weight within the collective unconscious. In terms of the life of the psyche, the brutal and routine events of 400 years ago are still recent memories. We can carry imprints of such events through reincarnational memory within the deepest emotional aspect of the psyche (Pluto). These imprints can also be left on the subtle mind (Uranus). We carry them as aspects of the collective unconscious (Neptune) that we emotionally (Pluto) and mentally (Uranus) identify within our core selves

Inner Tyranny

In An Outline of Psychoanalysis, Freud writes, “It is a remarkable thing that the super-ego often displays a severity for which no model has been provided by the real parents, and moreover that it calls the ego to account not only for its deeds but equally for its thoughts and unexecuted intentions, of which the super-ego seems to have knowledge.” [ix]

Freud wrote this in his early eighties while in the final stages of a painful throat cancer (exacerbated by his beloved cigars) during his exile in England. His words[CCC2]  articulate his troubled sense of the power of the internal super-ego function to outdo the punitive behavior of the actual parental imprint. The passage’s inclusion near the end of Freud’s last book indicates the significance he ascribed to this observation.

Certainly I have experienced this question during a session: what is the source of the ferocity that my client feels toward himself? A basically good person, who would not treat any other living soul with such malice, can justify treating himself badly because of a deeply internalized dynamic of shame and guilt. It is as if he has created an inner being just to attack himself. But why?

In The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit, Donald Kalsched shows us how, in the name of self-defense, traumatized aspects of the psyche can develop into self-traumatizing monsters. This happens when energy that is supposed to be directed towards defending against future trauma instead begins to attack the self that was being protected. In the psyche, the very nature of this protective inner army is to fight, and if we don’t dismantle it after an appropriate battle, it can turn its energy inwardly, waging battle on the self. Kalsched writes, “Trauma doesn’t end with the cessation of outer violation, but continues unabated in the inner world of the trauma victim, whose dreams are often haunted by persecutory inner figures.” [x]

He also makes the point that those subject to psychological trauma often find themselves encountering those same kinds of traumatic life situations again and again. Even when a traumatized person makes an effort to change and better her outward circumstances, there seems to be some inner process that simultaneously undermines her efforts. He writes, “It is as though the persecutory inner world somehow finds its outer mirror in repeated self-defeating ‘re-enactments’—almost as if the individual were possessed by some diabolical power or pursued by a malignant fate.” [xi]

We might identify this as misdirected persecutory Saturn energy. The energy wants to go somewhere but isn’t being properly directed. What’s more, the source of these traumas and the inner tyranny that arises in response can stem from past-life experience, making it even harder to identify and treat. These show up in the present life as unresolved karmic complexes around power, personal self-expression (including sexual expression) and experiences of familial and societal punishment. In Understanding Karmic Complexes, Patricia Walsh describes past-life regressions that show specific prior-life traumas underpinning current-life psychological blocks or phobias as the weight of personal and collective memories of punishment.

When it comes to healing and finding the right time to change these kinds of patterns, there is no easy recipe. I have witnessed clients who show up ready for change. The change then manifests within our conscientiously held space, created just for that purpose, and is an unfolding of what was already poised to unfold. All that was needed was the right intentional space in which to allow the process.

For others, years of committed work will produce only limited results. Of course, we must respect that the damage some people are healing from is very severe. So patience, a high-functioning Saturnian energy, also applies here. Knowing that as an astrologer, you may only see your client once, it would be useful to learn how to recognize this pattern and at the end of the session, if appropriate, suggest the client consider ongoing counseling to help dismantle the inner tyrant.

Still, even in the presence of clients who have endured the most difficult circumstances, we can create a healing context in which the inner tyranny abates almost miraculously. This teaches us that at the heart of the therapeutic project, there is a mysterious grace that none of us can own or control. The lesson here is to set the stage appropriately, make a concerted effort, have patience when required, and trust grace to show up when the time is right.

Moving Past Judgments

Within the mysterious rhythm of healing, we can observe a general principle that applies equally to the one-time astrological reading and to long-term therapeutic work:

To the extent that the client is undermined by a punitive Saturnian superego, the counselor, as his guide, needs to facilitate a compassionate space in which the client’s hypercritical voice can be sufficiently quieted to enable him to explore the nature of his true potential free of internal tyranny.

The key to a fruitful therapeutic encounter is to provide a safe enough space for the superego’s punishing voice to subside sufficiently for the individual to contemplate her life without the imprisoning “should” and “not good enough” that otherwise cloud the inner sky so much as to obscure the light of the radiant inner Sun.

All client work, whether astrological or psychotherapeutic, must pay homage to Saturn. If this initial requirement is not met and the client does not feel safe enough, the danger is that the whole encounter is filtered through her pre-existing negativity. During a one-time natal chart reading, this concern is heightened and especially important to notice. If not properly addressed, a client’s negative super-ego may block her from taking in healing messages from the reading so effectively that she is prevented from gaining the benefit that she needs in order to grow. Even the best-intentioned messages on the part of the counselor can fall on deaf ears because the client’s state of mind is so shadowed, her attention so unconsciously preoccupied, that the impact of the reading is all but squandered.

If you are unable to soften the client’s punitive inner Saturn during the reading, it helps to know that recording the reading can alleviate this issue in some cases, when repeated listening over time can help the client eventually receive the needed information.

When a client has the potential for this kind of Saturnian inner dynamic, it’s important to choose our words wisely. A pattern of self-judgment is more likely to be constellated if we present information with phrases like “you should” or “you ought to.” Even classical astrological terminology such as “detriment” or “exaltation” plays into this Saturnian shadow. To be on the safe side, if you use these words, think about whether they are truly useful with a client who has no interest in learning astrology. You might try to find ways of avoiding the terms altogether. If you do decide to use them, make sure to qualify them with descriptions of what the words mean to you. If a client has Venus in Scorpio (classically termed “in detriment”), describe the evolutionary potential of such a placement. Give the client some constructive information to work with. Explain how a detrimental trait can be turned into an asset.

At times we need to make a judgment call about whether the client is expressing her real self or some false self or idealized self that is responding to an inner tyranny of should (the distorted Saturn shadow). The easiest way to make this judgment call is to analyze the quality of the client's inner prompting or motivation. The aspirations that have been co-opted by the inner tyranny will always have a punitive or unrealistic edge—pushing her, waiting with eager self-punishing judgment if she fails to make the self-imposed grade. In contrast, the aspiration of the real self, while acknowledging the effort that may be required, will include a healthy realism and acceptance about how change might play out. If the real self is running the show, you should be able to sense the humanity of the individual, the self-care involved.

In such moments we proceed with caution, but do not back off. Empathy and experience are your best assets here, and they combine to form the gentle power to stand for the individual’s true self-expression even while risking an apparent conflict with her current expression of herself.

The Core Dilemma of the Healer

In any modality that involves primary interaction with the conscious self, the healer will face the following paradox in the intention expressed towards her client:

You are perfect just the way that you are and I love and accept you within that inherent value. Alongside: I wish to help you feel better, minimize unnecessary suffering and enable your further potential—so there is something in you that needs to change and grow.

The Buddha conceived of a “Middle Path” existing between the illusion of eternalism (perfection, or heaven in a fixed, unchanging form) and the illusion of nihilism (all is change, so there is no ultimate meaning). The Buddha’s Middle Path provides a model the healer can apply to the above dilemma. On the one hand, difficulty arises when we admit that we are not perfect (eternalism). On the other, we can feel that we are a failure or worthless (nihilism). In a reading, a client may get stuck at either side of this equation. The perfection problem can take the form of identification with a happy childhood: that everything in the family experience was “just great.” Then, as the reading unfolds, it becomes clear that this was not really the case. The danger then, when the client has an identification with a fragile fantasy of perfection, is that when that illusion breaks he can quickly descend into anger or despair. He may then swing to the side of nihilism. Our job is to point him towards the middle ground, to find healing balance between the two positions, and also something closer to the truth.

We can be most useful to our clients if we convey that she is already perfect as she is and simultaneously act as a powerful advocate for her desire to transform and change. We can start by stating that every chart is perfect as it is, arising as it does out of the divine and intimately connected to the perfection of the cosmos. We can explain that our chart describes the unique potential each of us is charged with fulfilling—and that to achieve that, we need to identify areas in which change could be useful.

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