Her Sun also sits within 10 degrees of a conjunction with Uranus, the Awakener, the Radical, the Rebel. This aspect is illuminated by Dr. Angelou’s involvement with many social movements and civil rights actions in her lifetime. Throughout her entire life, she carried with her an ability to disrupt apathy, injustice, and harm with her direct and thoughtful messages as well as with consistent and unglamorous work. Before she was a celebrated author, Dr. Angelou was an artist and organizer. She was director of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, worked directly with Malcolm X as a cofounder of the Cultural Association for Women of African Heritage, and documented the anticolonial struggle while editing the Arab Observer when she lived in Cairo.
Sun conjunct Uranus might be considered as harmful as it is helpful, however. Being so disruptive, Uranus’s flare for being inventive may not be appreciated until we’ve learned how to navigate its eccentric path. It speaks to the wild twists and turns Dr. Angelou’s life took, and how unconventional a person she was, but it also speaks to the chaos she experienced as a young child being moved about many times between her mother and grandmother.
Now it is time to choose your own adventure. Look back at the list of aspects to your Sun that you wrote down here and read the sections that apply. Then skip ahead to the reflection questions at the end of this chapter (here).
Gifts
SEXTILES
The sextile is a 60-degree angle that is friendly and mild but helpful and encouraging.* A sextile from any planet to your Sun will be beneficial, even if subtle.
A sextile from your Sun to . . .
Moon creates a harmonious relationship between your soul’s purpose and your way of living it out.
Mars will instill your identity with courage and energy. It will generally promote your ability to find your way through life, unfazed by what most might fear.
Jupiter will encourage an optimism and faith in life. This aspect magnifies your ability to create opportunities through your own enthusiasm and acts as a blessing to you personally.
Saturn will help you demonstrate your authority, your boundaries, and your discipline in a helpful way. This aspect gives you the vibe of a boss.
Uranus gives your personality an eccentric flare that helps you get noticed, speak your mind, and generally find it easy to be different.
Neptune lends a dreaminess, glamour, and imagination to your personality. This aspect can promote your ability to connect to others through compassionate understanding.
Pluto creates depth, intensity, and an undeniable power. This aspect can help you connect to influential people.
TRINES
The trine is a 120-degree angle that is harmonious and helpful. Stronger than the sextile, trines are able to impact a person’s life in more definitive ways. Trines from any planet to your Sun will encourage your talents and gifts. Quite often we take these gifts for granted, as they are easy for us. When we haven’t worked for something, we often diminish its value. When we are having a hard time, however, if we focus on the trines in our chart and the blessings they bestow on us, we can more easily get back on track.
A trine from your Sun to . . .
Moon creates a harmonious relationship between your soul’s purpose and your way of living it out.
Mars will make taking risks and demonstrating your strength and courage look easy to the outside world. This aspect helps you to care for and defend what most needs it.
Jupiter will help you to show up in an expansive, inspiring, and exuberant way, creating your own luck through your faith that things will work out. This is the strongest trine that any planet can receive; if your Sun receives one from Jupiter, it signifies a certain kind of protection and luck.
Saturn gives you the gift of self-discipline, structure, and the ability to accomplish what you set out to do. This aspect creates an identity that thrives when achieving goals.
Uranus can create a personality that finds it easy to break with tradition and that needs to experiment with personal self-expression.
Neptune grants a heightened sensitivity, a vivid imagination, and an easy and relaxed demeanor that others find magnetic.
Pluto creates depth, intensity, and power, and can also help you to attract influential people.
Challenges
SQUARES
Squares to our Sun occur when there is a planet 90 degrees to the left or right of it. Squares cause tension, aggravation, and action. They can lead to emotional, mental, and possibly physical discomfort. However, this discomfort is dynamic and can cause the person to take much action to alleviate the discord.
A square from your Sun to . . .
Moon will give you a desire to act. In general, the Sun and Moon in a square aspect give you a feeling of inner tension that drives you.
Mars is a challenging aspect that may create violence, anger, and aggression. Yet when reckoned with, you can become adept at working in situations that others are too afraid to tackle, or at channeling your energy into courageous action.
Jupiter will generally veer on the side of optimism and exuberance but can exaggerate your ego, persona, and belief in your own skills and abilities.
Saturn can feel like an obstacle that depresses your life force. Responsibilities may be cumbersome, and internal or external critics can inhibit your path. However, working through these obstacles will bring the best of you to the fore. Developing compassionate discipline and being dedicated to building a meaningful life can liberate you from the more oppressive manifestations of this aspect.
Uranus can cause disruptions either to you or through you, and it often challenges the status quo (for better or for worse). This signature will create a personality that is shocking or contrary. This can feel positive, necessary, and exciting to you and others, as well as unnerving.
Neptune can lead to self-deception and a blurring of boundaries, making it difficult to be consistent, grounded, and realistic. However, working with the sensitivities and artistic talents that Neptune usually brings can be a positive way to tune into and use this very otherworldly energy.
Pluto can confront you with experiences of loss of control, abuse, and struggle for autonomy and your own power. This aspect usually creates a very deep and introspective nature. You are someone who, if you chose to heal from your more harrowing Pluto experiences, is comfortable plumbing the depths of the psyche and soul. The kind of personal power this creates in you is undeniable.
OPPOSITIONS
An opposition to your Sun occurs when there is a planet in the opposite sign. The opposition is exact when the planet is 180 degrees away. Oppositions challenge us, force us to confront things, and push us to strike a balance even in difficult times.
An opposition from your Sun to . . .
Moon means that you were born just before, during, or just after a Full Moon. You need to fully express your potential in the world through the development of important partnerships and creative cross-pollination.
Mars can make you feel like you have lost your power, energy, drive, and ambition through experiences that are psychologically or physically harmful. To balance this out, you need to learn how to deal with your own anger, how to manage conflict with consciousness, and how to protect yourself from harm when and where possible.
Jupiter can create a dynamic in which you regularly overextend yourself through extreme highs and lows. Because it’s Jupiter, which is naturally positive, the hurdle is less about challenging obstacles and more about the dangers of excess.
Saturn can set up a dynamic where it feels like you are at odds with an authority figure (or many), especially one that is patriarchal. Finding ways to reclaim your authority through disciplined efforts and applied skill can help overcome the feelings of inadequacy, shame, self-criticism, and self-consciousness that this opposition can create. All difficult Saturn aspects get easier to work with as we age, since Saturn demands maturity.
Uranus can bring disruptive life experiences, breakdowns
, breakups, traumatic events, and also breakthroughs that change the course of your life. Something exciting, eccentric, or experimental needs to be integrated into your personality.
Neptune can challenge you with experiences that result in a loss of personal boundaries, energy, and vitality. Anxiety, depression, and a loss of direction are common, especially in early life. This is an aspect that can make you want to choose escapism over responsibility, fantasy over reality, and illusions over what is in front of you, all as a coping mechanism. Integrating your sensitivities can in turn help you to develop psychic or artistic talents, an understanding of others’ pain, and an astute awareness of the interconnectedness of all things.
Pluto connects you to sources of power that can feel overwhelming. Pluto being the God of the Underworld tells us about what happens out of public sight. Crime, abuse of power, and secrecy are all themes that a person with Sun and Pluto in opposition may be up against. Either you have those experiences yourself, are drawn to investigate what is taboo, or come up against many extreme life events. You need to learn how to work through obsessions and your desire to control life, instead channeling that energy into work that feels deep, cathartic, and transformative.
Mergers
CONJUNCTIONS
A planet is conjunct your Sun when it is in the same sign as your Sun. It results in a blending of energies. This energy can be positive or negative, depending on the planet involved.
Your Sun conjunct . . .
Moon means you were born just before, during, or after a New Moon. This placement makes you act on your own instincts and will either feel like you have done this before (if born just before a New Moon when the Moon is in an earlier degree than the Sun) or like you are completely new at this (if the Moon is at the exact same degree or a later one than the Sun). Both placements have to rely on their intuitive responses to life.
Mercury is common because Mercury can only be a maximum of 28 degrees from the Sun. This combination can create a clear and consistent channel between your sense of self and the style in which you communicate to the world.
Venus is incredibly helpful for the Sun. Venus lends the Sun a pleasing likability, charm, and ease working with erotic and creative energy. This is increased if the Sun and Venus are in Taurus, Libra, Pisces, or Leo.
Mars can be difficult for the Sun to integrate, much like Saturn conjunct the Sun. The positive attributes of Mars are courage, vitality, drive, and energy. The difficult qualities of Mars have more to do with anger, violence, and wounds, both psychological and physical. If you have Mars conjunct the Sun, one of the main obstacles to living your purpose is to accept that part of your purpose is to be controversial. If you can learn to channel your competitiveness toward what’s helpful, you will go a long way. This is a little more of a seamless placement for those with Sun and Mars in Aries, Scorpio, and Capricorn.
Jupiter is incredibly helpful for the Sun. The enthusiasm of someone with Jupiter conjunct the Sun is almost impossible to quell. Optimism, vitality, exuberance, and positivity infuse your personality, and you are philosophical, always looking at the big picture. These traits are more pronounced if the Sun is in Sagittarius, Pisces, Cancer, Leo, or Aries.
Saturn means that your persona may lean toward pessimism. This planet’s penchant for doom and gloom can be the rain cloud that obscures the Sun’s desire to shine brightly and boldly. However, it also lends you the ability to make frank and honest appraisals of a situation. It’s important for you to find meaningful work that you can dedicate yourself to. Saturn tends to be unfairly harsh, and with this combination, you may have to learn to cut yourself some slack, otherwise nothing is ever good enough, including you. This combination usually means that you need to temper your judgments with compassion for yourself and others. This combination gets easier with age, as you find your way toward mastery and self-sufficiency. It’s also easier in Capricorn, Aquarius, and Libra.
Uranus can create a personality that is exciting, unpredictable, erratic, innovative, and eccentric. Because Uranus spends about seven years in a sign, everyone born with the Sun in that sign will have this aspect. This is why I choose to consider it a dominant aspect of the personality and life only if the Sun and Uranus are within 10 degrees of each other and in the same sign.
Neptune, when within 10 degrees of the Sun, can create a loss of self, since Neptune diffuses anything that it touches. Incredibly porous, you may feel an overidentification with others (or others with you) and a need to work on personal boundaries. Incredible sensitivity needs to be channeled into work or projects that help you connect with what feels larger than you. Spirituality and addiction, recovery, healing, fantasy, art, and dreams can play a part in shaping your life’s purpose.
Pluto, when within 10 degrees of the Sun, creates an intense personality that wants to control. Eventually, when this combination learns to transform what is difficult into what can be used for fuel, it is unstoppable. You may need to investigate many aspects of life that are related to the underworld. Accumulating resources can become an obsession if you mistake inner power for outer wealth.
Reflection Questions
Which planets are helping your Sun to shine? Do you feel their good graces? Do you ever downplay these gifts or take them for granted? How can you support yourself in making the most of this ease in your chart to live out your full potential?
Which planets are impeding or challenging your Sun’s ability to shine? Is it validating to learn this about your chart? How can you support yourself in understanding these challenges as growth edges, not immovable obstacles?
What have you learned about your Sun that you need to radically accept in order to live out your life’s purpose?
IV
The Second Key
Your Moon
Your Physical and Emotional Needs
The Moon has always been an evocative, mysterious source of inspiration for humankind. The second brightest light in our sky, the Moon is our ever-changing nocturnal guide. Astrologically, it represents our needs, wants, and cravings. It represents our changing emotions, our body, the body of the person who birthed us, how caregivers cared for us, and the stories of our past and lineage.
Just like the Moon in the sky, the Moon in our chart reflects the light of our Sun, our life’s purpose. It tells us how we live out that purpose in the physical realm. It speaks to our daily experience of manifesting our spiritual selves. It is the reflection of our soul’s experience in our body.
Unfortunately, understanding this without judgment is often difficult because we live in a culture that judges our bodies. Living within white supremacy, and the sizeist, ableist, misogynistic, cisnormative, transphobic, classist culture it creates, we are often convinced to degrade our body. Capitalism profits from our rejection of our body, convincing us to invest our life energy, our money, into buying products to change ourselves.
Understanding more about the Moon in our chart can help us give meaning to some of the more difficult experiences we have in our body, perhaps even helping us to have a deeper appreciation for it.
As with the Sun, there are three main characteristics of your Moon that you should consider as you unpack the physical and emotional conditions you need to live out your life’s purpose:
The sign that it is in (how you meet your physical and emotional needs)
The house that it is in (where you meet your physical and emotional needs)
Other planets that are talking to your Moon (who is impacting your ability to meet your physical and emotional needs)
Once we are old enough to meet our own needs, it’s up to us to find the nourishment we crave. The Moon tells the story of what we need and how we need it. Knowing this can help us to radically accept who we are and take better care of ourselves. If your Moon is in an air sign, it will crave connection, conversation, relationships (romantic or otherwise), and intellectual stimulation. If your Moon is an earth sign, it will need to build something of substance, work in ways tha
t garner tangible results, and have material and physical comforts. In water signs, the Moon needs emotional nourishment, to cry, to have a place to express its feelings and create emotional connections. The Moon in a fire sign will need action, adventure, and passionate exchanges on a daily basis.
Key Points to Remember about Your Moon
Your Moon represents your physical and emotional needs, your history, your relationship to nurturing and being nurtured, and your relationship to your parent or main caregiver. The Moon is the body that is home to the soul as it lives out its purpose.
The Moon in your chart speaks to your physical, daily experience.
It is through the Moon that we unpack our life’s purpose daily.
You Were Born for This Page 7