The Only Astrology Book You'll Ever Need

by Joanna Martine Woolfold

  In comparing your two charts, begin with your Sun. What is your Sun sign? Now consult the aspects table on page 288. Is your Sun in a compatible sign to your lover’s Sun? For example, if you have an Aries Sun sign, is your lover’s Sun sign Leo or Sagittarius (four signs away) or Gemini or Aquarius (two signs away)?

  Now look at the two Moon signs. Are they compatible with each other?

  Don’t worry if your two Sun signs or Moon signs are not in the most harmonious aspect to each other. Remember that a square or opposition (three signs away and six signs away) may add fireworks to the relationship, and also bring interest and excitement. In any case, this is only the beginning of your comparison. The positions of your respective Suns and Moons are a factor to consider, but only one among many.

  Here is a very positive factor: If your Moon is in the same sign as your lover’s Sun, or vice versa, this is a wonderful augury. It is a green light to a happy and lasting affair and indicates that each of you should have a deep understanding of the other.

  Major Points of Incompatibility

  If your Sun sign is the same as your lover’s Ascendant (Rising sign), or your Ascendant is the same as your lover’s Sun sign: This is a powerful indication of happiness and contentment between you. Your personalities mesh well because you tend to think alike.

  If your Sun sign is in opposition (six signs away) to your lover’s Ascendant, or your Ascendant is in opposition to your lover’s Sun sign: This is also a positive influence and bodes well for rapport. In this case, each person would be likely to supply what the other needs or even lacks. For example, if she is a Libra Sun sign and he is an Aries Ascendant, he will probably be able to give a push to her lazy nature, while she can bring a touch of elegance and romance to his aggressiveness.

  If your Sun sign is the same as the sign of your lover’s Tenth House, or your Tenth House sign is the same as your lover’s Sun sign: You both mix career and love well. In this case, your aims and goals should be compatible, and each can be a source of power or inspiration to push the other.

  The Sun and Ascendant

  As you have just read, two powerful influences for compatibility are when the Suns and Ascendants in the two charts are in conjunction or in opposition.

  If you don’t fall into either category, there are other aspects to consider. Do your Sun and your lover’s Ascendant (or vice versa) form a square (three signs away from each other)? There may be quarrels along the way and probably more than a little competition between the two of you. But the sparks of feeling between you should at least make the affair interesting.

  Are your Sun and your lover’s Ascendant (or vice versa) in sextile or trine aspect (two signs away or four signs away)? There will be a great deal of tolerance for each other’s foibles. You both tend to blend with each other and work harmoniously together.

  Venus and Mars

  Venus, planet of love, has always been a feminine planet in astrology. It represents your capacity for affection and sharing, your geniality, friendliness, and charm. The position of Venus in your chart tells what kind of effect you have on others. In a woman’s chart, it is usually the placement of Venus that gives an indication of her love nature.

  Mars, which represents energy and aggression, is a masculine planet. It deals specifically with a person’s sexual nature, with the fire and passion of sexual response. In a man’s chart, it is the placement of Mars that gives an indication of the way he deals with women.

  Just as the Sun and Moon in your chart indicate to some extent what kind of man or woman you are attracted to, so Venus and Mars point to the kind of person who sexually stirs you. In a woman’s chart, the position of Mars will often tell what kind of man arouses her. Very often the arousal is on a subconscious level. This may be the film star who ignites her imagination, the man at a party she is immediately intrigued by without even thinking about it.

  In a man’s chart, the position of Venus usually indicates the kind of women he is drawn to. For example, if his Venus is in Gemini, he is likely to be stimulated by a woman who is amusing, lively, and witty. Venus points to the woman who, consciously or not, seizes his emotions. Astrologers always look at the positions of Venus and the Moon in a chart to see where a person’s emotions are most strongly attracted.

  There is a powerful sexual attraction when:

  • Your Venus and your lover’s Mars (or vice versa) are in the same sign: Both of you are passionate and sexually responsive. Your love life will be stimulating even if there are temperamental differences.

  • Your Venus is in the same sign as your lover’s Ascendant (or vice versa): You tend to be imaginative lovers and know what pleases each other.

  • Your Venus is in your lover’s Sun sign (or vice versa): This indicates not only a joyous sex life but also mutual interests in other areas.

  • Your Mars is in your lover’s Moon sign (or vice versa): Can be a volatile combination because of the emotional element; a high-keyed sex life is indicated.

  I hope I have piqued your interest in learning about charts. The more you work with charts, the more proficient you will become. You will intrigue friends and family with your insights and observations. In addition, as I have stressed throughout this book, you will gain in self-knowledge, which is what astrology is all about.

  *I use the word lover here to mean anyone you are romantically connected to, whether it is someone you only fantasize about or someone you’ve lived with most of your life.

  Part Four

  ASTROLOGY IN HISTORY AND LEGEND

  what resembles our Capitol building. It is called the Caracol observatory. Inside, a spiral staircase leads to various windows from which the positions of the planets can be observed as they shift throughout the year.

  If you should find yourself in Brittany, the seaside resort in northwest France, visit the Menhirs (great stones) of Carnac. These are huge upright granite blocks ranging from sixteen to twenty feet high. They were built by sun worshippers (many historians believe they were Druids), and used for astrological calculation.

  In the south of England there stands the magnificent structure known as Stonehenge. Stonehenge consists of a series of stones, some as high as twelve feet, placed in a circular pattern. Outside the stones is a circle of holes or pits. In 1961 Professor Gerald S. Hawkins, an astronomer from Boston University, submitted the pattern of Stonehenge to analysis by an IBM computer. He discovered that these strange stones and holes can be used to record the positions of the Sun and Moon, and that virtually every eclipse of the Sun and Moon can be predicted from them. Obviously, the people who built Stonehenge in 2500 B.C. were not just barbarians who painted themselves blue with woad. They built what is, in effect, a sophisticated astronomical observatory!

  In the United States a structure called Casa Grande, built by Hohokam Indians in Arizona around a.d. 1300, has eight openings that are aligned with the risings and settings of the Sun at both solstices and both equinoxes—the four cardinal points of the zodiac.

  Clearly, there are no new ideas; there are new people discovering old ideas. Here is a brief look at the earliest astrological lore in more or less chronological order.

  HINDU (5000 b.c.-3000 b.c.)

  Hindus trace their religious wisdom back to seven ancient sages known as the Rishis. The word rishi means “to shine,” and the original Rishis were the seven stars of the constellation Ursa Major (Big Dipper). Hindu religion literally began with the stars.

  Vishnu, the reigning god of Hinduism, is the Sun incarnate, their most divine being. Sometimes, when the world is in discord, Vishnu takes various forms and visits the Earth. Some of the shapes he takes on are the Ram, the Bull, and the Lion, and carvings of these shapes are found on temple walls dating back 7,000 years. In modern astrology we still use those three symbols: Aries the Ram, Taurus the Bull, Leo the Lion.

  The Hindus divided the sky into twenty-eight equal parts, called Lunar Mansions, each part representing a passage of the Moon through its twenty-eight-d
ay cycle. The lunar cycle, in fact, is a basis of Eastern astrology. Western philosophy is founded much more on the solar cycle. As a result, astrologers often refer to the Western world as children of the Sun and to the Eastern world as children of the Moon.

  The Indian zodiac has twelve signs, the same number our zodiac has. However, in India there is a concept not found in Western astrology. This is the doctrine of karma and reincarnation. Karma is the journey of the soul through various lives (incarnations). A person’s karma is based on three things: 1) the influence in this life of acts committed in previous lives; 2) the influence of one’s present acts on the next life; 3) unrealized acts. The practice of astrology in India is often linked to the discovery of what stage a person’s soul has reached.

  EGYPTIAN (3000 b.c.-300 b.c.)

  Egyptian astrology was also bound up in their religion. The priests held the secrets of the heavens. Within a complicated hierarchy of gods and deities, each god had a specific power and ruled over a particular kingdom of influence. For example, Osiris was god of the dead. Isis was Osiris’s wife and sister, protectress of the dead. Thoth was the god of learning, inventor of hieroglyphs, and scribe of the gods. Many Egyptian symbols and deities reappear in the present-day occult study of Tarot cards.

  The Egyptians were the first people to foretell a person’s character by the date of birth. They also gave to each month, and indeed to each day, a special deity who ruled that day and that month.

  The River Nile was the focus of Egyptian life. The river made their barren region fertile, and so it is not surprising to find the imagery of water used again and again in their mythology. The sky was a goddess named Nut, who was also an enormous river. Lesser gods crossed the sky-river in their individual boats. When an Egyptian pharaoh died, he was provided with everything he needed for the journey across a great river into the afterlife.

  At first, Egyptians divided the sky into thirty-six sections. (The Greeks later called these sections dekanoi, meaning ten days apart, from which we get our words decan and decanate.) These thirty-six decanates remain unchanged to the present day (see chapter 3). Later, the sky was divided into twelve parts, and each part was given a form and a name. Each part of the sky was assigned three stars to call its own, and each was given a boat in which to cross the sky. See how similar the twelve Egyptian sky gods are to our modern astrological signs:

  The Egyptians believed the Sun, another powerful deity, controlled the waters of the Nile. The Sun brought the Nile to flood stage, providing needed irrigation to the surrounding countryside and making the deserts fertile.

  The Moon was also a special deity. The Egyptians designated several gods to represent it. The famous Eye of Horus, sometimes worn as an amulet to protect against danger, was a picture of the Moon. When the eye of the hawk-god Horus was completely open, the Moon was full.

  Venus had her honored place among the gods. The planet Venus is a brilliant, silvery star that at times is seen in the morning and at other times in the evening. She was pictured by the Egyptians as a two-headed goddess, each head wearing a different crown.

  One of the most famous astrologer-kings in ancient Egypt was Ramses II (nineteenth dynasty). At his death in 1223 B.C., Ramses’s body was placed in a sarcophagus covered with astrological symbols, and put inside a pyramid at Abou-Simbel. There the great pharaoh lay, like Merlin, in his room of wonders. Some of the wonders are still being discovered. For example, we have learned that Ramses’s tomb was constructed so that on a certain date the rays of the Sun would find their way into the very pit of the grave. To this day, and on that very date, they do. When Ramses VI (a successor to the great Pharaoh) died, a star map drawn in the shape of a seated man was placed on his tomb. Modern scientists discovered that by using this map, they can chart the journey of the stars for each hour of the night throughout the year.

  Not until human beings are replaced by a civilization of machines run by a great computer are we likely to get any greater precision than that!

  CHINESE (2800 b.c.-present)

  With Marco Polo’s adventurous travels in a.d. 1275, Europeans learned for the first time of the great beauty, wealth, history, and romance of China. Untouched as they were by outside influences, the Chinese had developed their astrology along somewhat different lines from the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Babylonians, and Greeks.

  Life in ancient China revolved around the Emperor. His title was Son of the Heavens, and he was an absolute ruler. Confucius wrote of the Emperor: “The sovereign who rules by virtue is like the polar star. He stays motionless in his place while everything turns around him.” It was the Emperor who maintained good relations between the forces of heaven and human beings here on Earth.

  Some historians mark the beginning of Chinese astrology during the reign of the Divine Emperor Fu Hsi around 2800 B.C. The Bamboo Annals (a manuscript found in a Chinese prince’s grave in a.d. 281) tell about Emperor Yao, who named the twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac and divided the sky into twenty-eight Mansions of the Moon.

  The Chinese zodiac differs from the zodiac of the West. There are twelve years, and each year is represented by a different animal. This twelve-year cycle is sometimes called the Yellow Road of the Sun. The twelve animals are the rat, ox, tiger, hare, dragon, snake, horse, ram, monkey, cock, dog, and boar. Legend tells us that when Buddha lay on his deathbed, he asked the animals of the forest to come and bid him farewell. These twelve were the first to arrive. The cat, as the story goes, is not among the animals because it was napping and couldn’t be bothered to make the journey.*

  Chinese astrology is not content to rest with a division into twelve animals. There are also five elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water). A Chinese horoscope is divided into interlocking sets of the numbers ten and twelve (e.g., ten Celestial Stem signs and twelve Terrestrial Branch signs). In addition, the ancient principle of Yin and Yang (negative and positive forces) is very much involved in charting a horoscope.

  Astrology has been an integral part of everyday life in China. The new Communist regime, which prides itself on rationalism and materialism and derides astrology as mere superstition, has made few inroads on the people’s faith in the divinations of the horoscope. Not even the authority of the state has prevailed against astrology.

  A Chinese person always knows his or her animal sign and will often give his or her age by naming the animal year in which birth occurred. Major decisions in life are still made according to astrology. This is especially true when the Chinese seek guidance about whom to marry and when. Astrology is also a guide as to when to conclude financial agreements, begin journeys, start building a new house, and even where to bury the dead.

  Some modern astrologers have tried to combine Western astrology with Chinese astrology. They give each person both an astrological sign and an animal sign. One becomes, for example, a Gemini Tiger or a Libra Dragon. For those interested in learning more about this fascinating attempt to merge two cultures, there are some books on the subject.

  In truth, however, the astrology that we practice owes less to these Eastern influences. We are, after all, children of the Sun and rely more on solar astrology than the Eastern world and its children of the Moon. Our astrological lore can be traced back to the Sumerians and to the fascinating fragments of documents that contain the astrological predictions of Sargon the Ancient, who ruled around 2800 B.C. in a city known as Babylon.

  BABYLONIAN (4000 b.c.-125 b.c.)

  In a fertile plain in the Middle East, bordered by the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, lies a region that was once known as Mesopotamia. The southern part was called Babylonia; the north was called Assyria.

  The Sumerians were the first people to settle in the area, sometime around 4000–3500 B.C. They were mostly shepherds and farmers, who apparently spent a great deal of time looking up at the sky. They soon noticed a connection between the heavenly cycles and the cycles of growth in plants and food. Based on such observations, the Sumerians began to worship three all-importan
t gods: Sin the Moon god, who traveled in a crescent boat and was the most powerful; Shamash the Sun goddess; and Ishtar the goddess of fertility, whose home was the bright star of Venus.

  As in most early cultures, the astrologers were the priests, and the priests were not only religious leaders but leaders of government as well. Each priest ruled his separate province (called city-states) and dispensed divine wisdom to his followers. Large observatories or watchtowers (called ziggurats) were built for the priests to study the movement of the stars and planets. The ziggurats in the cities of Ur, Uruk, and Babylon were almost 300 feet high. We can still visit a ziggurat built by King U-Nammu, who founded the Third Sumerian Dynasty (2079–1960 B.C.). It is widely believed that the biblical story of the Tower of Babel describes the building of a ziggurat, and tells in mythic terms of the folly of trying to master the secret of the heavens.

  By the time the Babylonian culture was in full flower (between 2800 and 500 B.C.), astrology had become more sophisticated. Besides the Sun, Moon, and Venus, four other planets had been discovered (Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). The planets were given individual characteristics and properties, and a god was assigned to each. For example, Mars, reddish in color, became identified with the fiery god of war. Venus, seen early in the morning, was in a sense giving birth to the day; she was therefore a feminine planet, associated with love and fertility. To this day, Mars and Venus have these same characteristics in modern astrology.

  The four seasons were also given symbols: Spring was a Bull, summer a Lamb, autumn a Scorpion, and winter a Turtle. These divisions of the calendar date back to the twelfth century B.C., and two symbols, the Bull and the Scorpion, are still used in modern astrology. Note also that in today’s astrology, the Bull (Taurus) is the sign for late April and early May (spring), and the Scorpion (Scorpio) is in late October and early November (autumn).