TonytheRainbowHealer

In part two of my basic astrology series (see part one here), I am going to focus on the planets, what they symbolize, how their energies impact us here on earth, and mention a little bit about retrogrades.

If you have ever pulled up your astrological chart before, you will notice it will list out all the planets and what zodiac sign each planet was in when you were born.  Each planet is an energy that influences part of your personality and the energies around us, and the sign it is in is how that energy is expressed.  The planets also will reside in something called houses in your chart which also mean something.  I will talk more about the houses of an astrological chart in the next post, but this will help you to understand the planet part about what it means when someone says, “I am a Gemini with my Mars in Leo and my Moon is in Taurus in the fourth house.”

Note: This might be obvious, but do not assume all the other planets are in the same sign as your Sun sign. Just because you were born a Leo, it does not mean you have Saturn in Leo, and Pluto in Leo, and Mercury in Leo, etc. You need to pull up your full chart to discover where all the planets are. I only say this because I have seen people go to read the chart descriptions for every planet using only their Sun sign, assuming that it was the same sign for all, only to discover that the descriptions were not making sense.

THE BIG THREE

I am terming the following “the big three” because they are the most commonly mentioned when you hear people talking about their charts, and they are the most influential and important when looking at the personality makeup of a chart.  In fact, if I had to divide up the planets into their percentage of influence on our personalities, I would probably divide them up roughly like this: the Sun as 50%, the moon as 25%, the ascendant/rising sign as 15%, and the rest of the planets, dwarf planets, asteroids, etc. would comprise the other 10%.  When you hear someone say, “I am a double fire sign or I am a triple earth sign,” they are referring to the signs of their big three astrological influences being in multiple signs of the same element. 

Sun:  While not technically a planet in astronomical terms, in astrology the sun is called a planet (or a luminary) and it is the most important and powerful in our natal (or birth) charts.  When you read a horoscope in a magazine or newspaper, or someone asks what your sign is, they are referring to your sun sign or the sign of the zodiac the sun was located in at your time of birth.  The sun represents the fire and essence of our personalities and our individuality.  It is our drive and central focus and determines how we meet our goals in life. It represents our creative life force, our will to live, and our conscious mind. If life is a play, the sun represents the role you play in this life.  The house and sign the sun is located in can also hint at life purpose and the lessons being taught to you for this incarnation.  The sun rules the sign of Leo.

Moon:  The moon is also technically not a planet and rather a luminary, but it is the second most important point in our charts.  It represents our inner self, how we feel about ourselves and the nature of our inner core.  It depicts the shadow self, and how we deal with feelings and emotions.  It pertains to our deepest personal needs and desires, our basic habits and reactions, and our unconscious mind.  While the sun directs us outward, the moon directs us inward.  It is often the part of us we keep hidden or locked away and do not reveal to others until they really get to know us.  It is our inner child and inner mother.  The moon rules the sign of Cancer.

Ascendant/Rising:  While technically not a planet or luminary, this point is such a large makeup of one’s personality that I felt it best to place a description of it here.  Anyone with a basic knowledge of their astrological chart will be talking about this point in their chart so it is useful to know what it is and why it is important.  The terms ascendant and rising sign are used interchangeably, but they mean the same thing.  The ascendant is the first house of your birth chart and determines where all the other houses fall.  It is based on what sign was rising on the horizon in the sky at the moment you were born.   This is different for everyone and is based on your exact time and location on the planet at birth which is why it is important for you to know your exact time and place of birth.  This is what makes every chart unique to each individual. The ascendant is the window into your personality.  It is the outward appearance you give to others when they meet you.  It is the natural and personal defense mechanisms we use to adapt to our environments, and it indicates how we relate to new experiences and indicates our first impressions and our expectations of the world around us.  I often tell people to read their horoscope for both their sun and their ascendant as this will give you a better picture of what the horoscope is forecasting for you.

THE PERSONAL PLANETS

The personal planets are the planets that are closest to earth and include the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, and Mars.   They move through every sign in the zodiac every year or two depending on the planet (every month in the case of the moon), and they have the most influence on our immediate everyday lives.  Depending on the sign and house placement of these planets and how they interact with each other, these are the planets that determine how you think, communicate, act, feel, and love.  They depict your sexuality, your drive, ambition, passions, aggression, likes and dislikes, looks, environmental factors, health, beauty, and style choices.

Mercury:  Mercury is the planet of intelligence, communication, mental pursuits, writing, commerce, speaking, reason, memory, short trips, and day-to-day activities.  This planet is known as the messenger, and its influence is shown in our very first interactions with people, from speaking to writing to listening.  It tells how we approach others to exchange ideas.  How we analyze, sort, and group our everyday world are depicted in our Mercury.  When we are positively manifesting our Mercury we are communicative, versatile, inquisitive, and curious.  Negative Mercury influences include high-strung, nervous, judgmental, anal, critical, indecisive, and overly technical.  Mercury rules the signs of Gemini and Virgo.

Venus:  Venus is the planet of love, beauty, attraction, balance, sensuality, relationships, affection, sex appeal, artistic and creative talents, art, dress, decoration, adornment, comfort, money, and material possessions and goods.  Our feminine sides are represented in Venus.  Venus is key to understanding how we approach relationships and pleasure in our lives.  It indicates how we spend our money and our leisure time.  A strong Venus can also indicate a tendency towards diplomacy and peace making.  Negative traits of Venus include self-indulgent, materialistic, vain, superficial, self-centered, narcissistic, and greedy.  Venus rules the signs of Taurus and Libra.

Mars:  Mars is the planet of physical energy, desire, survival instinct, sex drive, forcefulness, aggression, and action.  Mars depicts the masculine in all of us.  When someone is acting from a strong Mars influence, they are acting strong, direct, assertive, and forthright.  On the negative side, they could also be rash, impatient, pompous, rude, egotistical, overly aggressive, and violent.  How we handle our anger and how competitive we are is indicated by Mars.  Mars rules the sign of Aries.

THE SOCIAL PLANETS

The social planets are the planets in the middle of our solar system, Jupiter and Saturn.  This is where the personal meets what is transpersonal or what is beyond us.  It is where the collective or Universal oneness merges with what we experience in our everyday lives.  These are considered more societal forces, and they indicate how we as individuals interact with community and society.  The energies of Jupiter and Saturn are opposed to each other as you will see from the descriptions below, and throughout life we are learning to balance the lessons of Jupiter and Saturn to try not to tip too heavily towards one or the other.  Jupiter takes approximately 12 years to travel through the entire zodiac and spends about a year in each sign while Saturn takes 27-30 years to transit the zodiac spending about 2.5 years in each sign.

Jupiter:  Jupiter is the planet of luck, plenty, tolerance, expansion, generosity, optimism, abundance, fortune, hope, gratitude, morality, law, adventure, education, travel, philosophy, and religion.  Jupiter seeks insight through knowledge and wisdom.   Jupiter is a fun planet that challenges us to get out there and experience the world and everything it has to offer.  In our interactions with others, it challenges us to explore and grow.  It can manifest good will, a sense of humor, and mercy from a positive perspective.  However there really is too much of a good thing, and thus negative traits from Jupiter influences include excess, blind optimism, irresponsibility, and overindulgence.  Too much Jupiter can make us bankrupt, overweight, and create hoarding tendencies.  It causes tumors to grow and cancer to metastasize. Too much religion creates religious fanatics, and too much tolerance can create apathy towards immorality.   Too much energy spent in outward pursuits with no rest will cause us and our bodies to get sick and exhausted.  It is considered to be a lucky time when Jupiter is transiting your sun sign which happens once every 12 years.  Jupiter rules the sign of Sagittarius.

Saturn:  Saturn is the planet of constraint, restriction, work, rules and regulations, commitments, ethics, tests, discipline, responsibility, karma, and patience.  This taskmaster planet brings structure and meaning to the world, and it shows us the limits of time, space, and matter.  While this makes Saturn sound like a party pooper and buzz kill, these energies are necessary for our evolutionary growth.  Saturn teaches us about boundaries, fear, oppression, handicap, maturity, and restriction in relationships.  It rules status, authority, government, and large organizations and structures such as corporations and banks. The Saturn cycle is often talked about in astrology and when Saturn transits a particular sign and house for 2.5 years, you will notice that it seems to constrict a certain area of your life and thus you spend those years working on the issues and themes of that sign and house.  The Saturn return happens approximately every 27-30 years in life, and this is referring to Saturn returning to the same spot in the sky that it was at when you were born.  The Saturn return often is accompanied by crises in many areas of your life in order to force you to evolve into your next Saturn cycle with a greater understanding of what you learned from the previous 27-30 years.  In other words, Saturn will test to see if you learned all the lessons of the last Saturn cycle before you move forward, and the more off course you are from learning your lessons, the more intense and harder the tests will be.  Saturn rules the sign of Capricorn.

THE TRANSPERSONAL PLANETS

The transpersonal planets are the planets at the edge of our solar system and are the only planets in our solar system not visible to the naked eye.  They include Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, and many astrologers are also looking at Chiron as well as other large asteroids in our solar system.  The lessons of the transpersonal planets focus on spiritual evolution and the paths to higher consciousness available to all of us.  These are higher vibrating planets which have an overarching effect that can last for generations.  They are higher octaves of the personal planets whose energies can only be understood when we go beyond ourselves and become aware of our interconnectedness and oneness with all that is.  Uranus takes approximately 84 years to travel through the zodiac and spends roughly seven years in each sign.  Neptune and Pluto take 165 years and 250 years to transit the zodiac respectively, so their full cycles are not able to be witnessed in a human life span.  Neptune spends about 14 years in each sign while Pluto spends about 22!  It is easy to see how the lessons of these planets are generational in impact when they move so slowly through the zodiac.

Uranus:  Uranus is the higher octave of Mercury and rules the sign of Aquarius.  It is the planet of change, originality, quirkiness, surprise, shock, the revolutionary, inventiveness, intuitive awareness, and human genius in art, science, and technology.  Uranus provides humans with the opportunity to become unstuck by forcing change upon us for our soul growth and lessons in life.  While change is often times not fun or easy, this planet helps move us along so we don’t get stuck in a rut.  Uranus promotes progressive thinking, originality, and individuality rather than tradition.  Uranus challenges us to look forward with new perspectives and to awaken us to new possibilities.

Neptune:  Neptune is the higher octave of Venus and rules the sign of Pisces.  It is the planet of mystery, fantasy, illusion, disillusion, imagination, dreams, mysticism, occult and psychic phenomena, spirituality, idealism, drugs and alcohol, art, music, dance, poetry, and movies.  Positively in may manifest as enlightenment, mercy, and compassion.  Negatively it may manifest as deceit, confusion, trickery, deception, guilt, and addiction.  Neptune inspires our creativity and asks us to look beyond ourselves for explanations in life.  While Neptune might cloud us from being able to sense what is right and wrong or what is true or false, by doing so, it forces us to step out (or go inward) to test ourselves and to rely on our faith in a power higher than ourselves while simultaneously forcing us to have faith in ourselves and to take a chance on creating what we want to in our lives without fear.

Pluto:  While astronomers may no longer classify Pluto as a planet, astrologers consider it to be one of great power.  Pluto is the higher octave of Mars and rules the sign of Scorpio.  This planet has the ability to influence and impact the masses and it will plunge to the depths in ways that no other planet will go to.  Pluto is the planet of everything related to power and control, things hidden in the depths, transformation, the subconscious, dormant forces, death, rebirth, destruction, annihilation, and elimination.  It rules many natural disasters (although Neptune and Uranus also contribute), world events, terrorism, mob violence, and the uncovering of secrets. While all of that sounds quite dreadful from a human perspective, from a soul or higher-level perspective, Pluto does serve an essential function in helping to transform society and wipe away what no longer works in order to teach us lessons for our spiritual growth and to build something new.  This is the planet that facilitates the proverbial phoenix rising from the ashes.

Chiron:  Chiron has been called a dwarf or minor planet, an asteroid, and a comet and is located between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus.  Chiron is known as “the wounded healer.”  It depicts where we as individuals harbor our own wounds and our efforts we make in healing these wounds.  These are wounds that are deep in our psyche which are resulting from not just this current life but many lives over the cycle of reincarnation.  To heal these wounds, we must work on the issues indicated by the placement of Chiron in our chart and by overcoming our low self-worth and feelings of inadequacy surrounding these issues.  Chiron can also indicate in what areas we may become good teachers, especially if we learn to overcome the lessons of Chiron in our lives.

I am currently just starting to explore the symbolism and meaning of a lot of the smaller bodies in the solar system and might write something up on these bodies someday in the future. In the meantime, if you are interested, I recommend internet browsing for the following: Ceres, Pallas, Juno, Vesta, Lilith (Asteroid Lilith, True or Osculating Black Moon Lilith, Mean Black Moon Lilith, and the Dark Moon or Waldemath Lilith), Hygiea, Pholus, Nessus, Chariklo, Eris, Sedna, Makemake, and Haumea. There are many more beyond that!

Retrogrades

I’m sure you have probably heard about the dreaded “Mercury Retrograde” people are always talking about, so I want to clarify what exactly they are talking about. A planet is said to be in retrograde when it appears to be going backwards through the sky (and the zodiac signs) from its normal forward direction. While this is just an optical illusion due to how a planet’s orbit falls in comparison to Earth’s, this shift through the signs in the opposite direction messes with how the energies of that planet are perceived and expressed on Earth. Because all planets have a different orbit than Earth, all the planets listed above (not including the Moon, Sun, and Ascendent) go through a retrograde time. What happens during a retrograde energetically? Basically, the energies expressed by that planet retrograding essentially slow down or go to sleep. This is not the time to start anything new in regards to the energies expressed by that planet because in retrospect you will most always regret the decision you made. Instead retrogrades are the Universe’s way of getting us to slow down and go within. It’s time to rest, redo, reexamine, revisit, review, realign, reassess, etc. People, events, and places might reappear or reoccur in our lives, and issues might come up again to be worked on or resolved. Retrogrades are opportune times for words starting with re.

The social planets and the transpersonal planets retrograde every year for four to six months depending on the planet. Because they have influences that affect large amounts of people and are more generational and overarching in what they govern, these retrogrades are less impactful. The personal planets however have a huge effect on us when they retrograde because they are…well…personal. What zodiac signs and chart houses are most impacted depends on what signs and houses the planets are retrograding through, but everyone is generally affected somewhat. You can look back up under the description of each planet above to see what goes haywire, but here is a brief rundown of those three retrogrades.

• Mercury Retrograde occurs three to four times a year for three to four weeks at a time. Communications and mental activities get scrambled. This means relationships can breakdown, work miscommunications and dramas flare up, and people misunderstand each other. Anything involving communication should be double checked and even still might be misconstrued by someone else. This is not a time to send rash emails or post controversial social media posts. You don’t ever want to sign a contract of any sort during this time be it work or marriage or financial. It is not recommended to start new relationships or jobs during this time. Electronics will go haywire during this retrograde and often will break. This is not a good time to buy new electronics and goods unless you are forced to out of necessity due to something breaking. Finally, transportation and event planning can go awry during Mercury retrogrades. Unforeseen circumstances, emergencies, accidents, and events can arise during this retrograde throwing all your carefully laid plans into chaos. Just don’t be surprised if the fancy party or big vacation you planned during this time period ends up becoming complicated and difficult, your plane gets delayed or rescheduled, or your car gets stuck in traffic.
• Venus Retrograde occurs once every two years or so for about six weeks. Since Venus is all about love and relationships, Venus retrogrades are not good times to start new relationships, go on dates, get married, start new jobs, or sign contracts as Venus retrograde can obscure some of the finer points in a contract between people. People in established romantic relationships might rehash old issues or find problems in their marriages and partnerships that come up during this time. Exes can come back out of the blue, and you could be tempted to try to get back together with those people. Because Venus rules art and beauty, it is not a good time to change your hair, clothes, style, get plastic surgery, buy art or home furnishings, or redecorate your home. Financial decisions should be held off during this time, so it is not a good time to get a new loan, take a major financial risk or gamble, start a new business or job, or sign any sort of contract related to money. Money and payments might get delayed coming in and out of your bank account, or an old financial issue might rear its ugly head for you to deal with. Sometimes this could be positive though as an old financial issue could suddenly resolve itself. Finally, try to avoid legal decisions and anything involving the court system during this time. Venus rules Libra, and those scales of justice might not fall in your favor during a Venus retrograde period.
• Mars Retrograde occurs once every two years or so for about two and a half months. Mars retrogrades last a long time and because of this, Mars can often spend up to nine months in the same sign. That is a lot for Mars which usually spends only a few months at a time in a sign. Mars rules our energy and drive so during a Mars retrograde it is like the Universe has shut off the gas, and there is no energy to move forward. Anything started will lack energy and drive in its energetic imprint. Because of this it is not a good time to start any new projects, businesses, ventures, or relationships. It is not a good time to get married or divorced. Mars rules our sex lives so in starting a marriage or new relationship during this time period, one could end up with an unsatisfactory sex life or problems in the boudoir down the road in the relationship. Mars rules surgery and physical health so this is not a time to overexert yourself, risk your physical health in any way, or to schedule surgeries or medical procedures unless it is an absolute emergency. Physical accidents and injuries can occur during this time as well. Machinery and electronics might lose power or break, and it is not advised to buy new machinery at this time for the same reason. Finally, Mars rules aggression, anger, and war. People are often more irritable or ready to fight you during this time. Practice good anger management skills during Mars retrograde. It is never good to start new arguments and fights during a Mars retrograde as the energy won’t be there to back up the fight. A rule of Mars retrogrades is that whoever starts the fight loses, and this is a reason why countries that initiate a war during this time period will most likely lose the war.

Stay tuned for part three coming up next!