What Do the Planets Mean to You?
What Do the Planets Mean to You?
The planets effect your personal life in so many ways. To help you better understand your astrological chart, here are some crib notes:
When an astrologer talks to you about the planets in your chart , he or she is referring to the eight planets of our solar system other than our own dear Earth (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto) plus the Sun and the Moon!
The Sun is really a star and the Moon is really Earth’s satellite, but these two heavenly luminaries are called Planets in Astrology and they’re enormously important heavenly messengers. I always include the asteroid Chiron in my calculations,too, as it plays a big role in love, money and healing.
Astrology is psychology and philosophy rolled into one, a sort of roadmap to understanding the human condition and spirit. It allows an understanding of the nature of individuals and their complex connection to both the visible and the invisible worlds.
Each of the planets represents a characteristic or a drive within you. Their planetary placement shows you where the action is taking place on your lifepath. To understand their special energies means you can understand what your chart tells you about your strengths, weaknesses, potential paths, talents, relationships.
For those who believe in reincarnation, it tells you what you have brought to the party of life, for your current embodiment.
The Sun
The Sun is the major planet of your horoscope and these days, pretty much everybody knows what Zodiac sign they were born under. In fact, most know many of the differences between a Capricorn and a Cancerian, for example, and wouldn’t confuse a Gemini with a Scorpio!. It’s the indicator of your basic 
nature and it’s probably the one heavenly body you already have a relationship with.
Your sun is a key to life force, and your creative urge. It represents your need to shine, your desire for recognition, your self-esteem, your pride/shame issues. It exposes your basic nature.
Wherever the Sun lives in one of 12 houses and 12 signs – you’ll find where we long to be noticed, loved, or admired by the world. When expressing the power of our Sun’s house and sign we pour immense energy into the activities represented by our Sun’s house and sign, we feel most alive and at the height of our powers.
The Moon
The Moon is the second most important heavenly body in your chart because it’s the key to your innermost emotional self – not just your love-life, but all your emotional depths and needs. Security and safety, needs and desires to nurture and love is shown here.
It connects to the people we love, the parent who was a nurturing figure, and your capacity to be a helpful, caring human being. It informs your need for home,y our genetic roots and your emotional responses to whatever crosses your path.
Wherever your Moon is by house and sign, you want to nurture or be nurtured, to make warm, emotional connections. The moon is your deep tidal nature and your place of deep love and deep wounding.
Mercury
Mercury is all about mind and communication. Your mental agility, verbal ability, wit, logic, and intellectual curiosity are all the province of Mercury. Your conscious mind that sees the world, sorts information, learns and teaches, is a mercurial gift.
Wherever Mercury is in your horoscope, you are curious, interested, and insatiable in your desire to know more. Mercury placements impact writing, speaking and all communication styles as you interact with the world. Mercury helps you tell your story and sing your own individual song, unlike anybody else’s.
Venus
Venus rules your sensual nature and your connection to the physical plane as well as the world of loving relationship.
Venus rules pleasure seeking, whether we seek it through money, possessions, beauty, or sensual gratification, relationships, sharing, part
nerships or other expressions of pleasurable connection.
Venus is your key to love, your need for harmony, your appreciation of beauty, and your craving for comfort, and personal enjoyment.
Whichever House and Sign Venus occupies in your horoscope will determine where you long for sensuality, comfort, beauty, grace, love, and sweetness in the areas Venus rules.
Mars
Fiery Mars is all about asserting ourselves, defending our rights and going after what we desire in the world with gusto. It’s about sex and drive and passion and fire in the belly on all levels of life.
Mars can give rise to healthy self-expression and personal power, but can also push us into aggression, arguments, anger and negative forms of assertion that can cause troubles for us and others. Mars dictates our basic physical energy, health, sex drive, and has great impact on where we seek freedom and self-expression.
Wherever Mars is in your horoscope (by house and sign), you will fight to be free to do your thing. If your Mars energy gets frustrated, you’ll go to the mat to defend your needs. Mars, after all is said and done, was the God of War…Mars energy is feisty!
If we carry this too far, rash, impulsive and self-centered behaviors can trip us up. The best of Mars gives drive and ambition, independence, power and sexuality. It’s a dynamic, explosive power-player in our hearts and psyches.
Jupiter
Jupiter is gorgeous, giving and joyous! It represents our intrinsic need to believe in and to aspire to our ideals. Jupiter determines what we value and want more of in life. It’s also where we can exaggerate, overdo or overextend, so we have to use its opportunities with confidence, but try not to go wildly overboard.
Our faith and dreams reside in Jupiter – wherever Jupiter is in our horoscope, we want more in that area, maybe even too much of a good thing! Jupiter is expansive, optimistic, hopeful and can be self-indulgent. It’s the planet of abundance and joy. We may expect more than is possible because of where Jupiter resides in our chart. Home? Money? Family? Food? Love? Jupiter lets us look on the bright side and see the highest potentials. Jupiter can keep us going in the dark times, believing a better day will come.
Morality/ethics, faith, optimism, quest for the truth, philosophy/religion, drive for expanded horizons – these are all Jupiter’s beautiful gifts to us.
Saturn
Saturn is the Celestial Taskmaster. He’s no fun to deal with, but he sets us on the right path, frequently much against our will.
He represents our need to structure life and is the key to the limits of life: what we can do, cannot do, must do are in his bailiwick. Saturn also symbolizes authority figures in our lives: from the rule-maker parent (usually Dad but not necessarily so) to law enforcement and bosses.
Saturn impacts our career, conscience, ambitions, our limitations and our response to authority figures.
Wherever Saturn is in our horoscope we mu
st face reality and consequences (cause and effect). Saturn represents the principle of learning through experience which can sometimes rock our world and bring us to our knees.
People who are balanced in their expression of what Saturn represents are practical achievers who do as much as is possible within the structures of society.
Saturn helps us learn to deal sensibly with the material world in a responsible way, and to expect tangible results for our efforts. It also forces us to clean the drawers and closets of our lives, rooting out the false and non-essential.
Uranus
Uranus is th
e game-changer planet! It’s essential to our drive for individuality and utter uniqueness. Uranus gives us freedom to be different, to explore alternatives, to push the envelope, to change ourselves and the world around us.
Individuality, freedom, inventiveness, originality, humanitarian instincts, detachment, eccentricity, innovation, sudden changes, interest in technology, new and “cutting edge” ideas are all the province of Uranus.
Wherever Uranus is in our horoscope (by house and sign), we seek independence. We honor our own uniqueness and our ability to see outside the box. Uranus helps us invent, innovate and surprise ourselves and others. It keeps us open to possibilities.
Neptune
Neptune is the beautiful dreamer, the idealist, the illusionist. Neptune at its best is inspired by spirituality and idealism, at its worst, it creates a fantasy of illusions and can nudge a person into chemical ecstasies to escape from reality.
Wherever Neptune is in your horoscope it inspires and helps the imagination to soar beyond Earth’s confines. We need to feel uplifted where our Neptune is placed and may fool ourselves into viewing matters through rose-colored glasses but Neptune brings with it idealism, the quest for infinite love and beauty, intuition, compassion, imagination/fantasy and mysticism. We must guard against the delusionary aspects of its exuberance, but we must also delight in its magical blessings of imagination and flights of fancy.
Because of the ephemeral nature of the electronic highway – Radio, TV, Internet, movies, etc., your Neptune placement often points to success in the world of electronically-based magic.
Pluto
Pluto represents our need to relate to our own psyche via our inner drive for self-mastery, self-insight and self-understanding. Pluto themes have to do with depth analysis, tearing things down so regeneration and transformation can begin. Be it our lives or wordview, Pluto is the depth charge that rumbles up from our subterranean selves and shakes the very foundation of our beliefs.
Wherever Pluto is in your horoscope (by house and sign), you tend to probe deep beneath the surface to find Pluto makes us examine carefully all hidden meanings and deeper layers of knowledge. You may tear down and then build up, analyze carefully, and then rework and transform.
Pluto also symbolizes your approach to shared resources, money, and even sexuality. Pluto represents your deepest, most intense feelings and your capacity to share power, pleasure and possessions with another person.
This complicated energy not only drives toward transformation, but can carry both compulsions and resourcefulness to extremes. Pluto is the Revolutionary in your chart and can be an underground explosive that detonates within and explodes outward to destroy the old and make way for the new.
The Nodes of the Moon
The lunar nodes are points in space based on the relationship between the orbit of the Earth and the orbit of the Moon. The point on the Moon’s orbit where it crosses the plane of the Earth’s orbit (the Ecliptic) going north is the position of the North Node. The point directly opposite is the South Node. The Nodes move backwards through the Zodiac in approximately an 18 year cycle.
The North and South Nodes are always in opposition to one another, thus, they define polarities (by both the use and sign placement) that are quite significant for the individual. Nodal opposition can show areas where our struggle for balance is played out. The challenge, as with any opposition, is to find the middle ground, the positive synthesis (taking some from both ends).
Ancient astrologers felt the North Node was a mini-Jupiter, a place where things seemed better and softer, while the South Node was like Saturn, where things were tougher and forced one to face reality. Recent astrologers suggest that the South Node is an old habit pattern that is outgrown or has been mastered (in past lives, perhaps) and the North Node shows an area of areas of life toward which you are moving. The South Node seems a bit more “karmic” because one has to face a reality that cannot be ignored, but neither node should be dismissed as each plays a significant role in our unfoldment.
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