Special Announcement: Ask the Astrologer, which started as a monthly feature in August 2019 and then became a bit sporadic after November, is back as a twice a month feature! Once earlyish in the month and once around the middle of the month, I answer a question in a way that aligns with what you might hear in an actual astrological consultation. This is not your usual advice column, and not your usual astrology column, either.
To continue this as a twice a month feature, I need to hear from you! Currently, there are enough letters in the queue to keep it going til the middle of March. If I start hearing from more of you, it may even become a weekly feature. See the bottom of this post for ground rules and how to submit.
Advisory to readers who are new to the language of astrology: the following post includes a lot about aspects and aspect patterns, particularly the grand trine, opposition, and kite. If you are unfamiliar with any of these terms, please refer to the astrological glossary.
Birth chart: Lux
Placidus houses, true node
Source of birth information: Hospital record
Please tell me, what is the greatest hindrance that holds me back? It seems that I have no control over my life, obstacles and enemies.
I speak my mind and can be brutally honest. I see myself more of a Scorpio than an Aquarius - penetrating and takes no bullshit, but I also want humanity to succeed.
I have never used drugs, prescription or illegal, never been involved with criminals or any devious activities, but I seem to attract enemies.
The true problem with my chart is the people around me, women in general: Neptune opposite Moon. Or maybe Saturn. In my relocated chart (I live in a different country, across an ocean, from where I was born), Saturn is in the twelfth house. It’s also the ruler of my natal eighth house. My current location is where I’ve met powerful enemies, and cannot seem to shake them off. Would changing my residence change the outcome?
Is my Moon the culprit, or Saturn, or both? - Lux
First of all, I don’t work with relocation charts.* There are astrologers who do. There are even astrologers who will only work with a relocated chart if the native has moved a very long distance from where they were born, especially if the move took place during infancy or early childhood. I take the opposite position.
The way I see it, you’ll always have the gifts and challenges of your original birth chart, no matter where in the world you are. Your natal chart is the outline of the picture of your life. You get to fill in the details and colors. Moving to a different place will give you some different life experiences, which may be reflected in a relocation chart, but all the relocation chart does is slightly alter the tint of your life theme. Your life still has the same overall shape and the same basic color.
Incidentally, the twelfth house is the house of exile. Immigrating, even if it’s voluntary, is an exile experience. Perhaps this relocated Saturn position is more reflective of how you experience life as a foreigner in a foreign land, than of anything else. Even if you’ve been in your current country long enough that you identify more with it than with your birth country, there’s still something about you that’s foreign in some sense. It may just be your roots--reflected by natal Saturn in the fourth house of roots and family--but there is something.
So I don’t think your relocated twelfth house Saturn (relocation chart not shown) has much, if anything, to do with your tendency to attract enemies. I think your Neptune/Moon opposition has everything to do with it.
It sounds like you already know this, but there are two houses in the chart that can represent your enemies: the twelfth and the seventh. The twelfth house is hidden enemies. People who have it in for you without your knowledge. People who are plotting against you. People who you don’t necessarily suspect until they’ve already done something to you. Brutus was a twelfth house person to Julius Caesar.
The seventh house is open enemies. Rivals. Competitors. The person you actively dislike and constantly think about how to evade or one up. It fits into the overall meaning of the seventh house, which is partnership. Open enmity is a kind of partnership. You and your enemy are playing off each other, anticipating each other’s next moves, reacting to each other.
Both of those houses are also houses of projection, especially the seventh. Qualities represented by planets in the seventh house, if there are any, and by the sign on its cusp, are the qualities we most often disown in ourselves and project onto others. So, we draw people into our lives who show us our seventh house. If you’ve disowned your own seventh house qualities (for you, those would be the qualities of Neptune and Sagittarius), you draw in people who show you the most negative version of those qualities.
The twelfth, meanwhile, is where whatever you are completely unaware of lurks, and can brew for many years before you see it manifest in your life. That might in some cases be something external to you and bigger than yourself--for Julius Caesar, the whole senate plotting against him fit that picture--but most of the time, we create our own twelfth house issues.
That might mean seeing enemies where none really exist: the twelfth house is shadowy, full of illusion. That might mean a self created belief that the world in general is against you (to be fair, such self created beliefs usually stem from traumatic experiences). That might mean your own actions keep antagonizing the people around you, making enemies out of them, but you’re so unaware of your own actions and their effect on others that it takes you by surprise when people become your enemies.
You didn’t describe which kind of enemies you tend to attract--are they seventh house or twelfth house?--but your Moon/Neptune opposition, and your mention that your enemies tend to be female (and that you yourself are female**) tells me they probably have some of both house qualities. And that these “enemies” might very well be more your projection than anything else.
Moon represents the feminine principle, and can also represent personal identity, in the sense of who you are in the context of your people, your tribe. Moon is also indicative of our most deeply unconscious beliefs, needs, and desires. Taken together, we have your deepest beliefs combined with your sense of identity and femininity, and with the women in your life (Moon can also represent women in your life, in general), in opposition to Neptune, which has similar meanings to the twelfth house. Neptune is illusion and delusion. Neptune is also intuition and insight. Neptune is the planet that knows but can’t explain why. Neptune transcends logic. Neptune is insanity. Neptune is recognition that reality itself is an illusion. Neptune is the collective unconscious, and your personal piece of it.
You have quite a stew in that Neptune, and since it’s in your seventh house, if you have enemies, they likely combine the qualities of seventh house (open rivalry) with twelfth (shadowy, possibly unknown enemies who seem powerful, situations that feel entirely out of your control, and it’s not necessarily clear if the enemies themselves are even real).
Both Neptune and Moon deal with the unconscious, though in different ways. In opposition to each other, it’s like they’re playing on a see-saw. One of them is always up for you, always asserting itself in your life, though which one is up may alternate.
In another way, though, both your Moon and your Neptune are always heavily and equally present in your life. They are the nose and tail, respectively, of your grand trine kite. Moon forms a grand trine with your Pluto and with your Sun-Mercury-Mars triple conjunction. Since this grand trine is in air signs (Moon in Gemini, Pluto in Libra, Sun, Mercury, and Mars in Aquarius), and your big three (Sun, Moon, and ascendant) are all in air signs, you live mainly in the realm of air: thoughts, ideas, information, logic.
A grand trine is a combination of energies that work together smoothly. It is many times stronger than a single trine, because instead of just two planets that “want” the same thing and work together seamlessly, all three planets (for the purpose of the grand trine, your triple conjunction in Aquarius functions as one planet) want the same thing and work together seamlessly. Just as a good team of two sees its effectiveness increase exponentially when it becomes an equally good team of three, so does a grand trine work many times more effectively than just one trine.
What that means in practical terms is that your air qualities of thought and rationality and seeking information function so smoothly that you, most likely, take them for granted. Those qualities are you, and you described yourself with them: you speak your mind and want humanity to succeed (Aquarius triad, Gemini Moon and rising), with the penetrating quality of Scorpio (Pluto, which also has this Scorpionic quality), and you meet a perplexing situation with logical reasoning.
Grand trines are one of the greatest gifts a birth chart can bestow, and one of the greatest liabilities. On the one hand, whatever is represented by your grand trine comes to you easily, with no need for effort on your part. If you use it well, it can help you accomplish great things.
On the other hand, just because the planets work together well does not necessarily mean they’re working for your benefit. An air grand trine can give you great insights and powers of communication and ability to generate ideas, but because it’s nothing but air--no fire to give the ideas a spark of creativity and action, no earth to give them tangible form, no water to facilitate empathy and deep connections with others--your grand trine can turn into just a useless spinning wheel. You can easily get stuck in your thoughts, overthink things, or caught up in seeking a rational explanation for everything even when you’re trying to explain something non-rational, and go nowhere.***
It takes the other planets in your chart to keep you out of that rut. Planets that aspect one or more of your grand trine placements, without being part of the grand trine themselves, are your greatest allies in this. Neptune, being the one that turns your grand trine into a kite, is your greatest ally of all.
A grand trine kite is even more of an asset and even more of a liability than a just plain grand trine. The opposition brings some conflict into the picture. Signs in opposition are like identical twins with polar opposite personalities. They share certain characteristics--in the case of Gemini and Sagittarius, both love variety, both have teaching and learning as a key message, and both need freedom of movement; neither is good at sitting still--but their be all and end all is quite different.
Gemini is all about the small details, taking information in and passing it on, observing what’s nearby. Sagittarius is all about the big picture, philosophizing, lofty visions, the far and away. Gemini has all the curiosity of a kindergartner, taking everything in without needing to give it any extra meaning. Sagittarius is more like a university student, majoring in philosophy, going to study abroad: done with the basics, time to see the whole world. Your Moon channels Gemini, and your Neptune channels Sagittarius. You carry the polar opposite twins within you, and they both have to have a voice.
At its best, an opposition to a planet that’s part of a grand trine opens the closed loop, injecting a new and different message and stopping the endless, useless spin. At its worst, it magnifies the confusion and getting nowhere of the spinning wheel. This is especially likely when the opposing planet is Neptune, because Neptune is confusion and getting nowhere. Except when it’s glorious insights and a sense of reality in which anything is possible, even the impossible. Neptune believes in magic. Neptune is a fairy tale that sometimes becomes true.
For your kite to soar, your Neptune has to be functioning well. Because of the way you described your problem, I get the sense that you don’t have a comfortable relationship with your Neptune. Perhaps Neptune’s illogic scares you, or at least perplexes you to the point that you don’t know what to do with it. Perhaps your air grand trine logical self is overwhelmed by Neptune’s presence in your life.
When you disown your Neptune, which is in your seventh house (see above about disowned seventh house planets), you draw people into your life who show you the worst kind of Neptunian qualities. Perhaps they make you feel utterly insignificant and powerless next to them (one of Neptune’s functions is to wash away the ego--if it gets washed away without your consent, you feel like you’re not really there). Perhaps they are substance abusers and/or mentally ill (Neptune represents all forms of escapism; substance abuse and mental illness are some of the most common ones). Perhaps there’s something cult-like about them (since you mentioned enemies, plural, and said they’re powerful, I’m getting that sense).
It seems to me that your tendency to make enemies has everything to do with you not owning your Neptune. The Neptune/Moon opposition exacerbates that.
The solution is to develop a better relationship with Neptune. Do Neptunian things; creative things, and/or spiritual practices of whatever type speak to you. Since Neptune is an ocean god, contact with water--particularly the ocean if you have access to it--could be a way to call in Neptune. You might have other ideas that would also help you access your Neptunian qualities.
At the end of the day, your Neptune is part of you. If you own that part of you, you can also handle it in others.
*A relocation, or relocated, chart is what you get when you take a birth chart and recast it as if the native were born at the exact same moment in a different location. For example, if the native was born in Los Angeles, California at 3:00 pm Pacific Standard Time, and now lives in Boston, Massachusetts, their relocated chart would be cast for the same date in Boston at 6:00 pm Eastern Standard Time.
**Letter writer’s gender inferred from the name on the submission form. Name used here is a pseudonym.
***The closed loop is a possible pitfall of all grand trines, but what kind of closed loop it is depends on the element involved. A fire, water, or earth grand trine wouldn’t have such a tendency to get stuck in one’s thoughts, but could get stuck in some other kind of rut. This pattern can be changed by integrating other planets in the chart, particularly planets that form a square or opposition to any of the grand trine planets, and/or with the help of other people whose charts are strong in one or more of the elements the grand trine lacks.
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