What is Magic?

            Thus the basic intensity or emotional theme of a relationship is set up on the karma level; the particular script, the sequence of events which will unfold in a relationship, is set up on the conditioning level; and the costuming, the superficial appearances or show put on for the benefit of the neighbors, is set up on the expectations level.

            The glare of the expectations level blinds us to what is happening on the two deeper levels; and the expectations level is a lie.  What is actually going on in a relationship on the conditioning and karma levels is always quite visible; but we pretend we don’t see it, we pretend we don’t understand it, in order to uphold our expectations as long as possible.

            By “lie” is meant something that we feel, but which we suppress or conceal.  For example, if our sex partner is doing something that doesn’t feel good and turns us off, and we lay there and take it because we’re too embarrassed to speak up and possibly hurt our partner’s feelings, then that’s a lie.  Any time we do not communicate something we are feeling because we are embarrassed to do so, or because we don’t want to hurt or provoke the other person or become a target for his or her disapproval, we are lying.  Lying leads to sneaking around behind the other person’s back.  Lies lead to more lies.

            All the lies in a relationship are laid down right at the beginning.  By “laid down” is meant:  conscious.  Conscious for a moment, and then – just as consciously – repressed, ignored, “forgotten.”  The basic lies of the karma level may be laid down in the first few seconds of a relationship.  The lies of the conditioning level (the game plan of who’s going to hurt whom, and how) are usually laid down at the time the relationship is formalized – when the mutual decision is made to commit, to get serious as it were.  And the expectations level is a complete lie from the first pop. 

            All the alarm about the soaring divorce rate in our society, the call for a return to “traditional values,” is a bunch of baloney.  Those traditional values were a total lie, and it’s amazing that the human race put up with that lie as long as it did.  Traditional values means you get married on the expectations level and you never question it.  You learn somehow to live with a lie, with unhappiness, and you bite your tongue because the social sanctions (what the neighbors might think) against divorce were so stringent.  Instead of returning to living out lies, our society ought to stop glorifying the expectations level.  As is the case also with war, when society stops glorifying infatuation people will stop seeking it.

            Love relationships fail because we go into them with a lot of la-de-da thought forms about who we are and what we expect to get, and we run smack into heavy karma and conditioning agendas we had no conscious idea even existed.  We are not consciously aware of what expectations we have until those expectations aren’t fulfilled; and we don’t understand what our parents did to us until we find our partner doing the same thing – make us feel that old, familiar feeling in the pit of our stomach.

            As long as we’re relating to the other person on one of these three levels, we’re not relating to an actual person at all, but only to our own self-reflection, our childhood wounds, or our deep-seated fears and insecurities.  On the expectations level our attention is focused on the future; on the conditioning level it’s focused on the past; and on the karma level it’s focused on the remote past.  A true love relationship, however, involves relating to a real, live person in the now moment.

(excerpted from Bob Makransky’s book Magical Living, Copyright © 2001 Bob Makransky) 

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            The third (and deepest) level of relationship is the karma level – the level of the lessons we are trying to learn from certain people, based upon our experiences with them in other lifetimes and realities.  Anything which is wrong or out-of-kilter in a relationship originates on the karma level.  Our gut-level, first impressions of people are often good indicators of the kind of karma we have going with them; but our conscious minds often bury such information directly as it is perceived.

            For example, it could happen that the reason we are sexually turned on by a certain person is that in a previous life we raped and tortured that person; for some aeons, perhaps, that individual has been itching for a lifetime in which to right matters.  That might be the karma we have set up with someone; but all our conscious mind knows, on its level of expectation, is that we are sexually turned on by that person and want the person to validate it by having sex with us.  And so we put our head in that person’s noose, and wonder later on why things aren’t working out as we’d fantasized.

            The karma and conditioning levels work in tandem to control the actual circumstances and course of a relationship.  For example, if on the conditioning level we decide to reenact a parent’s abandonment of us and we choose a partner who will abandon us, we might select for that role someone whom in a previous lifetime we abandoned.  This can be considered a penance; but we can also look at it as a kind of “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” – like saying, “I made you suffer in that lifetime, and now I want to know how you felt – to feel the feelings I made you feel.”  On the karma level, as on the conditioning level, we try to restage events which will produce a resonance with some unresolved emotional issue in the totality of our being.

            The agendas we have set up with other people on the karma level are often revealed in the very first impressions we have of them and which we immediately repress.  It’s hard to describe this, and it’s different for everyone, but often upon meeting someone with whom we have a heavy karmic agenda going, we get a FLASH, a conscious feeling or thought, of something we desire or feel threatened by about that person.  And then we immediately “forget” what we just felt, because if we have bad karma going with the person, then that flash was of a side of ourselves which we don’t want to consciously face or acknowledge – a side we are calling upon that person to enact openly for us, to ram down our throat for us, until we’re forced to acknowledge it.  Thus we “forget” this first impression, and later on pretend we don’t understand why the person we loved and trusted so much could have changed so.

(continued …)

The expectations level would be problematical and contradictory enough if it were the only level on which we relate with other people.  Unfortunately, there are two deeper levels which actually govern the course of our relationships, and these deeper levels contradict the expectations level.

            The level which underlies and controls the expectations level, which assures that the expectations level will eventually crash, or be maintained in great suffering, is the conditioning level.  It’s the level of our basic conditioning by society, which is to hate ourselves.  Beneath the glitter and glory of our expectations, our self-images, is the grim truth that we actually hate ourselves.  We are taught to hate ourselves by our parents and society:  women are taught to hate their looks and their bodies;  Men are taught to hate their gentle, tender feelings (as opening the door to homosexuality).

            While on an expectations level we tell ourselves that what we want is to live happily ever after, we are conditioned by our society to feel unworthy and ashamed of ourselves, and to deny ourselves the very love which we consciously tell ourselves that we are seeking.  We are trained by our parents to hate ourselves in precisely the same fashion in which our parents hated themselves.

            The conditioning level is the level which psychotherapy addresses (unfortunately, after the damage is already done).  We are so overwhelmed by our parents when we are little – so awed by their divinity – that we are afraid to express, or allow ourselves to feel openly, anger at them, or any other feeling of which they would not approve – which contradicts their expectations.  Thus our parents’ expectations level becomes our conditioning level. 

            Society calls infatuation with our own self-images “love”; and so on an expectations level we tell ourselves that we are going into relationships to get “love;” whereas on a conditioning level we are going into relationships to deny ourselves love – to pinpoint, through the mirroring of another person, precisely how we ourselves are incapable of giving and receiving love.

            Just as on the expectations level our goal is the validation of our images, on the conditioning level our goal is to recreate all the emotional turmoil our parents inflicted on us, but this time around to grab the brass ring of love which our parents denied us.

            “Don’t blame your parents!  Just wait until you’re a parent yourself!” they (our parents) tell us.  Well, that’s wrong; we should blame our parents, because only by consciously blaming them are we in a position to consciously forgive them.  Only when we can see that it was their own self-hatred which their parents laid on them that impelled them to do what they did to us; only when we can see them as people in as much or more pain as we, who really did try to do the best for us they knew how; only then can we forgive our parents.  And only then can we forgive ourselves, and let go of our own self-hatred, no longer needing to reenact it or to blame ourselves over and over because we loved our parents, and all they cared about was being right.

(continued …)

            Love relationships fail because at no time in our training by society are we given a factual model of what a love relationship is, or how to make one succeed.  There are fundamentally three levels on which intimate relationships operate, and our social training only prepares us to deal with one of them – the most superficial one – and even that one ineptly.  This superficial level is called the expectations level.  It is usually the only level we address consciously.

            The expectations level consists of all our self-images and self-importance.  When we primp ourselves in front of a mirror, what we are primping is our expectations of other people.  It’s the level of our daydreams and fantasies, whereon everyone is as impressed with us as we are with ourselves.

            On the expectations level what interests us the most about a prospective partner is his or her physical attractiveness, manner of dress and bearing, social and educational background, future prospects, how “cool” he or she is, how he or she reflects back on us, what others will think of us for having chosen this partner.

            The expectations level must eventually wear out because its basic premise is getting something for nothing.  On this level everything we’re putting out (“giving”) is phony – it’s just to impress other people, or to get something more in return.  We’re putting out phoniness in the hope of getting something real (happiness) back.  And that’s not how the universe is set up.  There are no free lunches or free rides out there.

            The reason why the expectations level inevitably crashes – although it can and often does mellow into true love after the crash – is because it is wholly narcissistic:  it doesn’t include the other person.  It does not permit the other person to be a person, but only a reflection of our own fondest self-images.  It doesn’t allow the other person space to be real – to have feelings of his or her own.

            Love is not something we get; love is something we give – or better said, something that flows through us.  We can’t sit back and expect other people to hand us love just because they’re our parents, spouse, or children.  True, this can happen on occasion, just as it has happened on occasion that we’ve found money lying on the street and picked it up and it was ours.  But to expect money to come to us in that way is absurd;  and to expect other people to give us love just because we’ve stuck them in a supporting role is also absurd.

            The expectations level must eventually crash under its own weight by sheer exhaustion.  When people are involved with one another in an approval agreement, or any agenda that is not love, then everyone has to work overtime in order to convince the other or to convince oneself; and this is painful to bear.

(continued …)

Oriental Venus wants to possess and be possessed – to merge individual identities and surrender individual initiative in order to create something greater; whereas Occidental Venus prefers a free, easy, laissez faire relationship which serves merely as a springboard or a base of support from which to operate.  To dispassionate types the idea of commitment to relationship as an end in itself seems quite foreign and bizarre, and these natives tend to view possessive types as clingy, overbearing, and a bring-down;  whereas possessive natives regard the idea of a community of interests as quite superficial, and these natives see dispassionate types as cold, aloof, and selfish. 

            One might suppose, therefore, that marriage would be more likely to succeed between natives of the same type:  possessive or dispassionate.  In a “mixed” marriage the individual partners soon discover that they’re not going to get what they want from each other, nor is the other person going to be satisfied with what they have to offer.  The respective partners have contradictory expectations of marriage.    In the politics of relationship, the fact that the power in a relationship resides in the hands of the party who has the least stake usually gives the dispassionate party an edge in the normal course of things; but possessive types have a way of upsetting the apple cart when they feel they’ve been dispossessed. In yin-yang fashion, at the bottom of the dispassionate psyche there lurks an unrecognized possessiveness, a dependency usually unacknowledged until the relationship terminates (or threatens to terminate).  And at the bottom of the possessive psyche there lies an unrecognized dispassion – a cold, brusque, utilitarian independence to which the native resorts when he or she is blocked. 

 Marriage between two Venus oriental natives or between two Venus occidental natives is in some ways easier than a mixed marriage, because then the partners possess a like spirit of cooperation and can take the same assumptions about marriage for granted: they at least share the same basic map of marriage.   However this is no guarantee of success because even in this case one usually finds the other partner reading the map upside down.   

Even though the basic assumptions they are making may be in accord, does not mean that the common interests which bring two dispassionate natives together at the beginning will be enough to sustain them through the years; nor does it mean that the total union which the two possessive natives seek will be harmonious in all its specific implications.  The universal struggle of marriage is the slow and excruciating acceptance of the fact that this person who stands before you isn’t the image that you had thought they were; nor will they satisfy the needs you hoped they would.  A marriage between two natives of the same phase is as likely to underscore respective insecurities as it is to address respective needs.  On the other hand, mixed marriages have greater potential for growth – if the initial divisiveness can be overcome – because each partner is challenged to defer to the other, to give up something of his or her self (which when all is said and done limits one’s scope) to find happiness in a situation which he or she cannot fundamentally control.   In other words, mixed marriages require and teach greater trust.  

If we are going to manipulate other people and exploit them for our own ends – and everyone is doing this all the time with everyone else:  this is what the action of the planet Venus is all about, so there is no point in being shameless and pretending that we aren’t doing this – then we should try to be skillful in our machinations.  This means appreciating other people and what they do for us (also the action of Venus): being able to see things from their point of view, not taking them for granted, being gentle and kind to them, instead of just grabbing what we want from them and then tossing them aside.   

Both possessiveness and dispassion can be strategies of avoidance of intimacy:  possessiveness a strategy of control and dispassion a strategy of escape.  Both can become strategies of self-protection, refusal to take responsibility for there being a relationship, and thus both can be wrong.  The right strategy is to be willing to make a total commitment (as the possessive types do) but to maintain one’s own individuality (as the dispassionate types do).  

Control is avoidance of intimacy.  The dispassionate types aim for control in a day-to-day sense, whereas the possessive types seek long-term control; thus dispassion and possessiveness can be viewed as natural divisions of labor in the economy of marriage.  It’s up to the dispassionate types to keep things on an even keel – to keep things light and in perspective; and it’s up to the possessive types to keep things grounded and take a long-term view.   Then the types can work in collaboration instead of competition.

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Dispassionate types, on the other hand, bring to marriage expectations of mutual self-sufficiency, little diminution of individual choice for the sake of the relationship – i.e. the expectation that marriage is above all else friendship, and should entail nothing more than benevolent interest and good faith.  Marriage is viewed as a pooling of common interests insofar as such interests can be shared, with only a generalized feeling of good will and well-wishing beyond this point.  To these natives there is a relationship only to the extent that there is a commonality of interests.    

The dispassionate types are friendly and democratic:  they draw no distinctions between people, but  are equally open, or closed, to strangers and spouse alike.  When they are interested in someone they can be genuinely solicitous and sympathetic listeners; but when they are not especially interested in someone they can be brusque to the point of rudeness.  When they give their attention they do so wholeheartedly:  they stop everything they’re doing to help.  But most of the time they are too busy for people (unless other horoscope factors intervene, e.g. Aquarius emphasis).  Their reactions to people are more a function of the mood they’re in at the moment than what they expect to get from the people.  They always maintain a reserve and privacy that they allow no one to breach.  They prefer relationships with a minimum of clinging, self-adjustment, or inconvenience:  where people happen to meet, they meet; and where they don’t, they go their separate ways.  Within a relationship they feel a strong need for psychological elbow room:  some way of distancing themselves through personal activity.  They must have a life of their own. They will never permit any relationship to become the centerpiece of their existence, or permit themselves to critically depend upon anyone if they can help it.  The wedding ring is a dispassionate invention – something the woman can sell after the divorce.  They will not commit themselves emotionally to any situation or relationship over which they do not exercise decisive control, so they find it difficult to fully appreciate just how emotionally dependent on other people they actually are.  They are impersonal and impassive, quite simply unwilling to allow themselves to be hurt.  And when they are hurt, they make a conscious decision to slough it off, to ignore it, and then to turn their attention away from the problem to their other affairs.  Their security lies in maintaining an unobstructed exit, thus emulating the ostrich in strategy and effectiveness.  They try to gloss over conflicts and to accentuate the positive.  As a result they never really know what their true feelings are, since they refuse to acknowledge their emotional dependencies.  They go out of their way to please, to placate, as long as no real sacrifice is required of them.  They are quite capable of maintaining a pleasant front while nursing a deep resentment.  But at least they are free of the vengeful “I told you so” mentality of possessive types; they let bygones be bygones, and try to maintain a hopeful, positive, constructive attitude.   

(continued …)

When Venus is oriental – that is to say, a morning star:  when she rises before the sun in the east – then the desire nature is said to be possessive;  and when Venus is occidental – when she is an evening star, setting after the sun in the west – then the desire nature is said to be dispassionate.    Just as eager mind (oriental) exhibits the Gemini side of Mercury and certain mind (occidental) exhibits the Virgo side of Mercury, so too does possessive desire exhibit the Taurus side of Venus and dispassionate desire exhibit the Libra side of Venus.* 

            Possessive desire seeks a sense of owning and being owned, and is primarily concerned with alliances and matters of community belonging.  Dispassionate desire seeks a sense of personal privilege and prerogative, and is primarily concerned with preserving individual liberty against encroachment.  The tenor of the times for the past several centuries has been a gradual shift away from possessiveness and towards dispassion – at least in the human economy.  For example, the gradual shift from feudalism to democracy in political, social, religious, and cultural institutions throughout the world is a shift from a possessive to a dispassionate perspective on power relationships.  The institution of marriage, which in its broad outlines has been fundamentally possessive in nature, has been undergoing severe dislocations of redefinition in the past century, and has not yet stabilized itself in a recognizable pattern, except that it is evidently becoming more dispassionate.  This has entailed, for example, some diminution of emphasis in the popular mind on marriage for romantic love or pecuniary advantage (which are possessive ideals) and has given more emphasis to the idea of marriage as therapy or a creative collaboration between individuals (dispassionate ideals).  This is not to reject or endorse either possessiveness or dispassion:  the former is manipulative but warm and gay; the latter is just but cool and somber.  However, that half of the population which is dispassionate (those born with Venus placed later in the zodiac than the sun) are more in tune with the times, because the times seem to favor dispassion.   

             The differences between the possessive and dispassionate Venus types show up most clearly in each one’s expectations of marriage.

Possessive types are interested in commitment to relationship as an end in itself, to which all else is subordinate; hence they are less interested in the question of whether or not there is a sharing of philosophies, hobbies, interests, etc.  Possessive types bring to marriage expectations of mutual self-sacrifice – especially by the other person – fidelity, and the expectation that marriage is above all else a task, which should entail a common purpose, as opposed to mere common interests.  The wedding ring is a possessive invention: a pledge of undying constancy; a sign of ownership more humane than a brand.  However, the “loyalty” on which these types pride themselves is not so much to the people themselves as to their images of them; and when the image runs out they can turn on people with a cry of betrayal.  Their warmth can turn in a trice to cold severity.  Other people can sense this, which is why they tend to distrust the motives of possessive types in spite of how noble they believe themselves to be.  Where the dispassionate  natives are afraid of consciously acknowledging hurt, the possessive types use their hurt as a fuel to fire resentment.  Their security lies in their pride, in their fidelity to their own images; thus they anchor their emotional stability to the bedrock of their fantasies – to whether this or that illusion is being actualized in reality.  They unabashedly relate to other people in terms of the service they might render or the use to which they might be put; although they are quite willing to serve others in turn.  When all is said and done they are at least willing to trust other people to some extent. 

(continued …)

* As is the case also with the eager / certain distinction at Mercury’s conjunctions with the sun, there is no hard cusp effect between possessiveness and dispassion at Venus’ conjunctions with the sun.  On the contrary, the conjunctions exhibit an exaggerated form of the preceding quality:  Venus superior conjunction sun can be super-possessive and smothery; Venus inferior conjunction sun (indeed, Venus retrograde, period) can be super-dispassionate and don’t-touch-me.  But this is another story for another day.   

            In every relationship there is a power equation – someone has more control than the other person.   The power in a relationship at any given moment resides in the hands of that one of the partners who has the least stake in the continuance of the relationship.  Typically, therefore, the power equation in a relationship will teeter-totter back and forth over time (and over different lifetimes) – now this person, now that one, being the one presently calling the shots.   

            There’s no astrological way of determining who’s on first in a relationship at any given moment.   What horoscopes do reveal, however, is how the individual partners wield the power when it teeters their way; and this is shown primarily by the planet Venus.  Where Mercury is the planet of Mind, Venus is the planet of Desire.  Desire is always couched in terms of power – the balance of power between an individual and his or her environment.  To want is to cede power to whomever or whatever can satisfy that want.   

An individual’s satisfaction is reckoned in terms of the value of what he or she possesses.  In the first instance this means the body, its physical beauty or usefulness in work.  Anything of measurable value is symbolized by Venus – it is the impulse to score points for the self.   Where self-consciousness (Mind, or Mercury) has no measure, self-worth always has a measure.  The coin of meaning in the individual case can be Mommy’s love, money, social success, sex, heaven; or it can be merely the sense of worth that comes from all the patient suffering undergone in a lifetime.  But there must always be something to show for it all in the end:  some little blue ribbon or other, some measure of control over the environment, some sense of personal power and effectiveness; and that is self-worth. Venus symbolizes both the native’s manner of adapting him or herself to the environment, and also the concomitant adaptation of the environment to the native – the measure of his or her satisfaction and success (worth). 

In contrast to Mercury (mind), Venus (desire) shows a person’s dark or hidden side.  People readily communicate what’s on their minds, but it takes deeper intimacy before they reveal what they’re really after.  Too, most people know their own minds; and their minds are made up, or they can change their minds.  However, they often don’t really know what they want out of life; or how to go about getting it; or why it is that their efforts haven’t been rewarded.  Where mind is expressed as an attitude, desire is expressed as a yearning.  It is more symbolic in nature than mind, and it reveals itself to awareness not so much in conscious thoughts as in the imagery of fantasies and dreams.  For example, in our fantasy conversations, mind is the logical train of our argument, and desire is the longing for whatever response we hope to elicit from the imaginary interlocutor with whom we are conversing or interacting.* 

            Thus, where Mind is concerned with superficial order – rationalizing, filing and sorting –  Desire is concerned with power – weighing, maneuvering, manipulating.  Where Mercury presents himself, Venus offers herself, but with the clear intent of subduing that which cannot be seduced.  With Venus we’re talking about people’s strategies of control, manipulation, and avoidance of intimacy (loss of control).

(continued …)

*  “Dreams’ contents are symbolic and thus have more than one meaning.  The symbols point in different directions from those we apprehend with the conscious mind; and therefore they relate to something either unconscious or at least not entirely conscious.”   - C. G. Jung,   Man and His Symbols,  Dell 1972, page 80. 

It’s not that symbols have more than one meaning – a symbol has but one meaning, but different rational interpretations of it are possible.  A symbol is how desire reveals itself to mind – symbols are to desire what thoughts are to mind:  they mean what they mean, but the manifoldness arises when we try to analyze, to use mind / thought to try to encompass desire / feeling.   Hunger is just hunger; but a fantasy or dream of eating is a symbol for the desire and thus has ramifications.

When only the two rising signs are disharmonious (with both sun and moon signs harmonious), then there is some source of misunderstanding or non-­communication that often bogs down an otherwise smooth relationship.  Each party wants to talk while the other is interrupting.  They are able to see through one another quite clearly, and so they may become impatient with each other’s posturing on the one hand, and overly thin-skinned or sensitive to criticism on the other.  They may try to outguess or keep one jump ahead of each other, or keep bringing up the same old divisive issues as if for the sport of contention.  They allow the present moment to escape them in a welter of verbiage.  They may try to force one another to live up to an impossible image.  For example, after a trip to India to visit the birthplace of his idol Gandhi,  Martin Luther King, Jr. “felt, as in India, that much of the corruption in our society stems from the desire to acquire material things – houses and land and cars.  Martin would have preferred to have none of these things.  He finally said to me, ‘You know, a man who dedicates himself to a cause doesn’t need a family.’  I was not hurt by this statement.  I realized that it did not mean he loved me and the children less, but that he was giving his life to the Movement and felt he therefore could not do as much for his family as he might in other circumstances.  He saw a conflict between duty and love … But I knew that, being the kind of man he was, Martin needed us.”(11)   The inability to communicate can be very frustrating, since there is usually a profound emotional tie that binds them:  a good deal of what each has to accom­plish in life as an individual, the two of them can accomplish as well together.  Each must learn to put aside their own train of thought and really listen to the other, permitting them their whims and peculiarities, and taking care not to tread upon their aplomb. 

The foregoing descriptions of the various combina­tions of harmony and disharmony may appear some­what extreme.  The individual case will be more or less so, depending upon the type of relationship involved (since we tolerate different things in our intimate relations than in our casual acquaintances), and also upon the maturity of the two people.  Learning how to turn obstacles into advantages is what growth is all about.  In synastry, as in every department of astrolo­gy, free will is the overriding factor. 

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Notes 

(1)  Centiloquy XXXII.  J. M Ashmand, Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, Foulsham London 1917, page 228.

(2)  For example, the principal astrological signature of sexual attraction between two people is shown when a man’s sun, Mars or Jupiter conjoins or opposes a woman’s moon or Venus.  Of these cross-aspects between horoscopes, the sun-moon and Mars-Venus combinations are the most powerful sexual bell-ringers. Take up to 10° orbs of inexactitude, but only consider conjunctions and oppositions.  Note that the reverse case (e.g. man’s moon or Venus conjunct or opposed to woman’s sun or Mars) is not a sexual signature – it merely indicates that the woman is the leader or initiator in the relationship.

For gay men sexual attraction is shown when one man’s sun, Mars or Jupiter conjoins or opposes the other’s sun, Mars, or Jupiter.  Here the sun-Mars combination is the strongest.  For lesbian women sexual attraction is shown when one woman’s moon or Venus conjoins or opposes the other woman’s moon or Venus.  The moon-Venus combination is stronger than two moons or two Venus’s.

The absence of any sexual signature between two peoples’ horoscopes doesn’t necessarily deny sexual attraction, particularly if one or the other party has natal sun, Venus, or Mars in Scorpio.   However, without a sexual cross-aspect there could be a problem due to one or the other person becoming bored with the sexual relationship. 

                     Other features of relationships (apart from sexual attraction) are shown by other cross-aspects between planets – e.g. Saturn-Jupiter contacts indicate trust; Venus-Saturn or moon-Saturn aspects indicate that the delicate sensibilities of the Venus or moon person will feel hurt by the brusqueness of the Saturn person, who in turn dislikes being clung to.  And so on and so forth.  The cross-aspects tell little stories.  They are like little scripts of karma from previous lifetimes together, which have to be acted out again in this present lifetime.

(3)  Marc Edmund Jones, The Essentials of Astrological Analysis, Sabian, Stanwood WA 1970.  See also Bob Makransky, “Dr. Jones’ Methodology”, Considerations XVIII:3 2003 and Bob Makransky, “The Natural Disposition”, Considerations XVIII:4 2003-4

(4)  Ruth Prigozy, www.zeldafitzgerald.com/fitzgeralds/index.asp, (F. Scott Fitzgerald Society website)  

(5) Isadora Duncan, My Life, Liveright, NYC 1927, p 182. 

(6) Stephen Birmingham, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, Grosset & Dunlap, NYC

1978 p 106.

(7)  Dee Presley, Dee; Billy, Rick and David Stanley, Elvis – We Love You Tender,

Delacorte, NYC 1979 p 200-01

(8) news report on WENN 6/21/2000 posted at www.imdb.com/name/nm0000404/news

(9)  Lois Rodden, AstroDatabank version 2.0, 1998 

(10) Betty Ford, The Times of My Life, Ballantine NYC 1978, p 229-30 

(11) Coretta Scott King, My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr., Avon NYC 1969, p187 

            When only the two moon signs are disharmonious (with both sun and rising signs harmonious), then the feelings tend to be at odds, or at least not meeting.  Individual likes and dislikes are apt to differ.  Fre­quently the parties have separate outside friendships rather than share the same friends in common, since each needs people outside the relationship with whom they can hope and dream.  Within the relation­ship there is often a distance or detachment where a sympathy and understanding would normally be.  Each party may feel at pains to fulfill real or imagined expectations of the other, and so find it difficult to relax comfortably in the relationship and just be themselves.   There may be an air of formality and impersonality, with the two parties hurting one an­other either inadvertently or quite consciously as they struggle to express their needs to each other.   Breakups are especially acrimonious and spiteful;  Prince Charles and Princess Diana are a good example, as are Woody Allen and Mia Farrow who “had a huge, explosive break-up when Farrow found porno pictures in Allen’s apartment of her daughter Soon-Yi with Allen on 1/13/1992. Their split was official in August 1992, complete with bitter accusations and legal volleys.”(9)  On the other hand, in these relationships there is a sense of common direction in life and a mutual moral commitment, as well as the ability to see past the momentary emotional obstacles that occasionally keep them apart.  Each party has to keep their own preferences and inclinations on a leash, and learn to take satisfaction in the happiness of the other, neither judging nor rejecting that which the other person holds sacred.  

When the two rising signs are harmonious (while the two sun and moon signs are disharmonious), then there is a similarity in the roles that the two people play in life.  Each is willing to accept the other pretty much on his or her own terms, in hail-fellow-well-met fashion.  Their fondest images of themselves are mutually reinforcing: they do things like walk in the rain and watch sunsets together. They can really sit down and talk to one another; even without talking they under­stand each other very well, because their relationship is based on an instantaneous communication.  This is one reason why it is helpful for an astrologer to have his or her rising sign harmonious with that of a client.  Nevertheless, the parties in such a relationship recognize that there are wide differences between them on deeper levels, which inclines them to maintain their distances and not place undue reliance upon one another to come through in a pinch.  Even though they have the best of intentions towards each other, they are not always able to supply the kind of emotional support that the other needs.  These people help each other most, in bad times as well as good, by supplying an abundance of friendly interest and help in not taking things too seriously.  For example, after going public and receiving approbation for her outspoken opinions on such matters as women’s rights and abortion, Betty Ford felt “it bothered me that while I was getting so much praise Jerry was getting criticism.  He was a good sport.  He was proud of me and even in cases where he didn’t agree with my views, he was all for my spouting them. … You know, if you bring up a subject long enough with a man, why finally he gets so tired of it he agrees to anything.  There might be a woman on the Supreme Court now if I’d just brought it up more often.”(10)  (continued …