Lots of astrologers get caught up in the planets and signs (Saturn in Capricorn? Very serious! Mars in Aries? Very combative!) or in the single aspects that connect two planets (Venus trine Mercury? What a charmer!). The houses, if anything, are seen as an afterthought: Oh, and by the way, this characteristic is seen most in your work life or Especially watch out for this in your romantic relationships!

The client is then left with a collection of insight-fragments that neither capture the essence of the personality nor give a sense of relative proportion to each insight: The seriousness and combativeness, the romantic relationships and the work life all receive the same uniform treatment; the client is left without focus or direction. She feels she has to remember everything you said and absorb it mentally instead of walking away with a felt sense of the reading, understanding on a gut level how her total personality integrates and impacts her life.

The houses and aspects together create a map for understanding how a person traverses his or her interior landscape, for integrating a holistic understanding of one’s personality.

Etymologically, the word landscape comes from the Dutch word land (patch or area, from the Basquish word landa: labored earth) and the suffix -schap, which corresponds to the English suffix “-ship.” Beyond the more recent understanding of “-ship” as a state of being (kinship, rulership, etc.), the deeper roots of this suffix are words meaning to create, ordain or appoint (Source 1 and 2).

So there is, in the word landscape, an active sense of laboring and creating, as well as the more mystical sense of being appointed or ordained to a certain state. In addition, the word holds the more fixed ideas of land itself and the more-or-less passive “state of being.”

In the horoscope, the interior landscape is signified by the criss-cross of aspect avenues between planets. Different parts of your personality trudge along well-worn paths in your internal neighborhood, moving from one house to another, nudging, teasing, influencing, interacting to create the dynamics and issues particular to your personality. Just as in a village or neighborhood, some planets receive many visitors, while others live more solitary lives. Some avenues hook up with others, while some remain separate, awaiting paths to be cleared by foragers or adventurers.

Part of what works and what doesn’t in each case is influenced not only by the roadways that exist in the chart but also by how, and how well, the person “labors” that earth. Does he believe his lot is cast from birth, so makes few attempts to create his own destiny? Does she fight against what she’s been given, wishing for a different avenue entirely? Or does each recognize that a road has been forged and yet can be worked — that growth and happiness are neither nature nor nurture but, in fact, a glorious and challenging both at once?

Related posts

• No related posts.