Moon contacts in synastry is one way of seeing karmic connections between people.
Moon
These connections can show shared experiences in other lives between the two people or they can show karmic issues with mom that are being stimulated by the relationship.
Either way, moon contacts in synastry show that your relationship with that person reaches into your karmic past.
I use the same orbs for synastry as I do natal aspects: 7 degrees for conjunction, square, trine opposition and 3 degrees for sextile and quincunx. Looser aspects are read a little differently than tighter ones.
I often get questions about why I use the orbs I do. Bottom line is that in my 40+ year experience reading thousands of charts, wider orbs do not convey the specific aspect meaning.
Remember, everything in your chart is connected even if isn’t aspected. This is why the deep and specific meaning of any placement comes from the context of the whole chart.
Every placement is a part of the whole that is you. It may be easier to see how pieces that share house or sign placements have a connection, just know that your life is the connection between in your chart.
For example, your north node may not aspect anything, but there is a thread of connection to it throughout your chart because it’s where you are heading in this life and everything in your chart has a play in that.
So much to explore about the moon in your chart. Swipe above for some comments on synastry and aspects.
🌙 The moon is historical, irrational, and part of your essential nature. If you have any Cancer placements in your chart, you may tend to hang on to issues and beliefs associated with that part of yourself. This also goes for whichever house Cancer rules in your chart.
🌙 As you’ve been learning astrology, what has your moon revealed to you? How had it helped you to understand others?
Mars is our vitality. It’s the energy of passion. Mars gets us to take action.
When you are ignoring or suppressing your Mars, you may find yourself focusing on what other people are doing versus putting your energy into going after what you want.
If you find yourself feeling chronically annoyed, that could be a sign that your Mars feels stuck.
If you keep thinking about how someone else should or shouldn’t be living some part of their life, that could be your inner self screaming for you to pay attention to your own desires.
The essence of Mars is desire and passion. Mars is what you want. It’s your ability to be thrilled and excited. It’s the energy of your physical body, and it’s what moves you to action.
From Instagram
Clear expression of Mars includes feeling energized and taking inspired action. If you believe your Mars is stuck or could use a boost, look at how it’s placed in your natal chart and consider how you can support it.
🤎 If you’re feeling that chronic annoyance, ask yourself what you’re not tending to in your life. If you keep thinking about what someone else is doing wrong, be open to seeing what you need to do differently.
🤎 Your Mercury, Venus and Mars are about your personal human experience. Up level your life by healing your mindset (Mercury) owning your priorities (Venus) and are being willing to take action (Mars) that moves you into the natural flow of life.
🤎 If you’re struggling to glean something from your chart, remember that you have a direct line to your soul without it. You can get all your answers from the source of you 24/7. Nurture that inner dialogue.
Saturn is our karmic contract. It’s what we agreed to do in exchange for the opportunity to live this life. Saturn is time and space. It is our human experience, how we define ourselves in this time and space. Saturn rules boundaries, limits, structure, and our mastery of our earthly existence. Saturn also shows our father in the birth chart.
Saturn pic from NASA
Your karmic history with Saturn shows how you derive security and stability so that you can build the life you want. Look at Saturn in your chart for insight into where you came in needing to learn about boundaries and what makes you feel safe.
Saturn in the first house often feels they had to grow up fast by being given inappropriate levels of responsibility. They often feel they can only rely on themselves and are invested in having people see them as responsible. They have lessons around setting limits, learning to delegate.
Saturn in the second is often about self-reliance, self-worth, boundaries for self-care. It can be about understanding what is enough, what defines your true needs, experiencing security by having enough, understanding your responsibility about meeting your needs and where your responsibility to the needs of others begins and ends.
Saturn in the third house includes reliable communication, the effects your words have on others, when and how you have a responsibility to communicate, to use your voice responsibly.
Saturn in the fourth often includes learning to create a supportive family or family like support system, healthy limits with family, family commitments, protecting the environment and creating a home that feels safe.
Saturn in the fifth is about creativity, play, children, fun, romance, risks. Saturn here is often about balancing responsibility and healthy limits while giving yourself the security you need to take risks. This includes owning up to responsibility in a way that gives you choice and freedom versus creating obligations you come to resent.
Saturn in the 6th usually includes lessons around how to be of service without feeling subservient i.e., how to come from a place grounded in abundant self care versus guilt or obligation. Service can include both healing and service of others as well as helping others see the need for healthy boundaries.
Saturn shows what you agreed to do in this life. This includes lessons and tasks about bringing order, healthy limits, exploring security, responsibility and timing to the area of life (house) where Saturn is placed in your natal chart.
Saturn in the 7th house includes lessons around boundaries in personal relationships, being connected but not enmeshed, timing, limits, what feels safe, supported versus obligated.
Saturn in the 8th has lessons with learning to be vulnerable, and how to set healthy limits in intimate relationships. Your task may be to help others learn to do this as well, or help others deal with loss or to see how they can shift from feeling like a victim.
Saturn in the 9th is about spiritual growth, travel, higher education, religion, philosophy, and social justice. Saturn here often involves a need to expand your mind and explore the limits of righteousness. At some point you’ll need to ask yourself if you’d rather be right or experience joy, be right or live in peace.
With Saturn in the 10th house you may find yourself seeking a calling, feeling a need to understand your role and your unique contribution to the world. While you do need to demonstrate that you are responsible, you are also learning about the limits of perfectionism.
Saturn in 11th usually has some need to get behind causes and experience connection. They may help bring order to group activity and may tend to spread themselves too thin, and need to learn they limits about how much of themselves they can invest at any given time.
Saturn in the 12th is about the strength of compassion while learning the limitations of rescuing others. Lessons around feeling grounded in this earthly existence and fully embracing it while also being connected to life beyond this one.
Venus is how we give and receive love and rules every way in which we assign value. Venus opposes Mars early in the month, then continues with a series of squares to Jupiter, Pluto, Saturn and ends with an opposition to Uranus. All these challenging aspects to Venus urge us to get clear about our priorities and to ask ourselves what really matters to us.
So this month, intention is everything.
While transits are experienced most strongly if they touch your natal chart, there is such a strong theme this month, it feels like most people will feel this in some way.
These Venus transits are challenging us to become fully aware of our priorities and intentions. The confrontations we may experience this month are opportunities to learn why we may put a lot of energy into something and not get what we want, or when we get it feel as though it doesn’t fulfill us as the way we thought it would. We are facing ways we believe life isn’t fair, where we believe our choices are limited or non-existent, we are seeing how relationships may be out of balance and how we have isolated ourselves from people and things we love.
Our intentions can dominate our experiences and often override the stories we tell ourselves and the actions we take in the world. One example I use often is this: imagine that you are doing a favor for someone, but you feel so put out by it and resentful while doing it that instead of the person feeling helped or supported by you they feel awful. They feel like a burden, like they are worthless or helpless and wish they hadn’t asked you or you hadn’t offered. What you do for them may even fall apart and end up not being that helpful. Chances are you told yourself that you wanted to help, and some part of you did, but it was a cover story for your deeper intention that came from a place of guilt, obligation or something other than the pure desire to help.
This month, Venus is pulling back the curtain and showing us what we truly value and who is really there for us. We are seeing where love is in our lives, what we value, and where we actually want to be, what we want to do, and how we derive our worth.
We’re also revisiting balance in relationships and seeing where they may be one-sided. This includes both relationships where we do not ask for enough and where we give little of ourselves.
We are being challenged to be honest about what we really value so that we stop putting our energy into what we tell ourselves is important, and instead focus on what and who we truly love.
Some of this may not be easy, but facing it is worth it.
It’s worth taking the time to get a pair of shoes that really fit your feet. You can quickly buy a pair that look good and you tell yourself will work, but your feet won’t participate in the lie. The shoes may work out okay for a short time, but eventually your feet will feel the pain of your choice and make you regret buying them.
Denial always has an expiration date.
This month Venus is urging you to be honest with yourself about what matters to you. If there is any area in your life where you are pretending that something or someone is in alignment with your values, but is not, you’ll feel the friction and it will be a bit harder to pretend.
The good news is that the pain of disappointment or fear that you may feel opens the door to more of what you really love. You gain the focus and willingness you need to bring more of what you love into your life.
We all need grounding. We’re human. We all have the Sun and Saturn in our charts.
Pictured: garnets in a septarian bowl, sitting on a slab of petrified wood
The sun is our human identity in this life and shows us what makes us feel sane, grounded into who we want to be this time. Saturn is our humanity. It’s time and space, how we define ourselves here. It’s our societal structures, our ability to set boundaries, perceive limitations and experience our humanity. Living a spiritually driven path includes embracing our humanity. I used to travel a lot. Just counting plane rides it’s several hundred trips, then there’s road trips, and I moved to Europe twice. I got the most out of my travels by going local, going to the places unique to the area versus the same chains I had at home. If you feel stuck, scared, or in a funk, try sinking into your humanity and see what insight your Sun and Saturn can give you. They help you understand who you aspire to be and what you need to do along the way. They also help ground you in a way that can help propel you to action. It can be easier to get moving when you feel the ground beneath you is solid, and not so easy to run when what’s beneath you is rocky and shaking. You’re here, in a body, being human. Even if this year has dragged on for you I promise you, once you’ve lived a lot of years you’ll feel their speed and sometimes wish you could slow them down, just a little.
Transits show what outside energies will or won’t do for us. They affect us most when they connect to or trigger pieces in our natal or progressed charts.
Think about dramatic world events, they do not have the same impact on everyone.
This can be a great time for you to re-evaluate how and where you spend your energy.
Are you pouring energy into things that no longer matter to you?
Do you feel like you can’t stop investing your energy in something or someone, because you believe it will mean you wasted all the previous effort?
Are you ignoring what matters to you now?
Mars is your vitality, physicality, sexuality, ambitions, life force …
This is an amazing time to honestly re-evaluate how and where you express your energy through all areas of life, especially the areas Mars connects with in your chart. Consider everything …
⭐️ your presence, where you show up
⭐️ your money and resources
⭐️ how you communicate
⭐️ repetitive thoughts
⭐️ how you spend your time
⭐️ how you care for yourself and others
⭐️ causes that matter to you
⭐️ what you read, who you hang out with
⭐️ who you follow on social media
Put your energy into the life you want.
Ride the Mars energy wave and your life can accelerate in the direction you want.
I didn’t realize until I came here to post that it’s been a year since I updated the blog. I’m not going to make any promises on frequency this time, though I am back to doing readings again so the odds favor more postings. Truth be told, though I am endlessly fascinated with astrology, it usually takes some external nudge to get me back here writing. Clients are often that nudge.
Today I want to discuss moon speed.
Do you know your moon speed? If not, then you’re in luck, because I have a moon speed calculator you can have for free to easily figure it out.
Let’s back up though and first talk about why moon speed matters.
The moon is your temperament, it’s your capacity to respond emotionally, to nurture and be nurtured. It shows your beliefs about women, mothering and family that you brought into this life. It’s how you react moment to moment. The moon is not rational, it’s all about feelings.
You may be used to looking at sun signs for compatibility and while there’s value in that, the moon informs you about what it’s like to hang out with that person, to live with them or go on a road trip with them.
The speed of the moon when you were born gives insight into the speed with which you process your emotions. Other things in the chart will color this a bit, but in general, it helps to explain why you function the way you do. If your moon is slow, you need more time than most to process your feelings. If it’s fast, then you zip through them quickly and if it’s average, then you are more able to adapt to the extremes.
Ever wonder why you have no patience, or why you feel as if someone you care about is taking your feelings too lightly? The answers could be in looking at moon speeds.
Saturn rules time and space. It’s how we define our human existence. In your natal chart, it shows how you relate to structure, security, routine, limitations, commitment, and what you agreed to do for the opportunity to live this life. All the planets signify energy in the natal chart. Though they are all amazing in their own way, Saturn is sometimes seen very negatively. People focus on “limitations” and see Saturn as a very strict parent. It’s important to remember that none of the energies are inherently good or bad. Venus is loving energy, but can also be associated with extreme selfishness and vanity. Mars is passion and vitality, but can also be hostile and violent. All the energies are present in us and our lives. Understanding how we work best with them is how we experience the best versions of them.
Saturn is how we define ourselves in this body, in this place and time here on earth. Being in a body, having our immortal, limitless spirit in the confines of a body, let’s us experience this world. Limitations and structure can give us opportunities, as well as support. Looking at Saturn in your chart, it’s placement and aspects to it, gives insight into what area of life you are deriving security from in this life. It can show you where and how you are learning to set limits and what you have to contribute to the world.
While studying Astrology, I discovered that every planet has a beauty and brilliance. Every energy is magnificent and can flow through our lives in a way that elevates and improves our time here. Embracing and understanding each energy guides us to their most healthy and positive expressions.
Saturn creates the doors we can choose to open and walk through so that we may make real our most desired imaginings and discover love, joy, adventure, connection, transformation and peace.
If you were born on the day the sun changed signs, you aren’t some of both. It really doesn’t work that way.
The sun is a distinctive energy in the chart. The signs and degrees are as well. Having a planet at 0 degrees of any sign is very different than 29 degrees.
If you were born on a “cusp” day and you feel some connection to the two signs it’s most likely because you have some planets in both signs.
Mercury is so close to the sun (no farther than 28 degrees), it is always in either the same sign as the sun or a sign adjacent to it. For example, if you have the sun in Cancer, your Mercury is in Gemini, Cancer or Leo.
Venus is also really close (never farther than 48 degrees) so it can never be more than two signs away from the sun. If you have the sun in Leo, your Mercury is in Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra.
Lots of people have Mercury and Venus in a sign right next to their sun sign.
Then there’s all the other planets, plus the nodes, so having something in a sign adjacent to your sun sign is not unusual. As you learn about house placement and aspects, you start to get a feel for the depth and complexity of each piece in your chart.
If you feel a connection to a sign adjacent to your sun sign, there is a reason for it in your natal chart and it has nothing to do with cusps.
Most people know their sun sign by the day they were born. If you were born around a sun sign change, then it means you need to cast your natal chart to know your your sun sign. There are lots of free sites that do this for you online. Just search “cast natal chart” and you’ll get a long list. You’ll need to enter your date, time and location of birth and then the chart is cast your you.
If all you’ve ever known is your sun sign, cast your natal chart and start reading about your moon sign or some of the other planets.
I just replied to someone in a discussion group. The question was how to use the interpretations for planets when they are written in the format of Saturn in Sagittarius and the 9th house, Saturn in Aquarius and the 11th house, etc. After I posted I thought, blog post! So here it is …
When you are first learning astrology, it can be frustrating when everything seems so generalized. That’s because you are learning so many basics. It’s like learning a lot of vocabulary when you are studying a foreign language. You need to learn the vocabulary, but the individual words aren’t as meaningful as the phrases, sentences, paragraphs, etc.
Each house has a natural ruler. Starting with Aries on the first and going around the 12 houses with the 12 signs. Houses are areas of life experiences, and the natural ruler is sort of the most natural style for that house.
I’m not a huge fan of descriptions that are written as having a plant in Sag or in the 9th house and discussing them as if they are the same. They aren’t, though there are some basic similarities. Let’s look at your example of Saturn in Sagittarius and in the 11th house.
As background, I do karmic astrology, so the natal chart is seen as a painting of your past life beliefs and experiences.
Saturn is time and space. It’s how we define ourselves as human. It’s our energy that deals with limits, rules, structure, and our humanity. The sign of Saturn shows you how you come into this life expressing this energy. It reflects your old history. The house of Saturn shows your current life focus. It shows the area of life that you are specifically intending to develop this energy.
Saturn in Sagittarius is going to be someone that really wants to explore their limitations and in fact blow them up a bit. These are folks that need structure that can accommodate their need for change and action. They feel a kind of security in exploration. There’s also a bit of righteousness when it comes to rules and usually Saturn in Sag wants some kind of organized religion or religious community.
That kind of energy in the 11th house is going to be someone that is going to do what I just described in group, communities, causes, politics, social structures, friendships, co-operatives etc. I would guess that in your life you will be drawn to both the safety of a group, as well as a desire to explore the limits of groups. You can get energized working for causes and would be good at grass roots organizing.
Contrast this with someone that has Saturn in Sag but in the 4th house. This person feels safe at home. Their need to test their limits is more involved with family and how their home life fits with the entirety of their life.
Sign – style of expression.
House – area of life experience.
When you read the sign description, think style, how you express the energy. When you read the house description, think about the area of life this speaks to most.
