Depth Astrology

Astrologers don’t often talk about the structure of the horoscope chart. They’re concerned, instead, with the movements of planets and stars: how the heavenly bodies move across the skies to interact with each other, to brand upon each individual a small, unique form of their unfathomable universal energies.

They want to know how each person will express a Moon square Saturn or a Mars trine Uranus or any other of the seemingly infinite combinations of stars, planets and houses that describe our lives. They want to tell people how these energies may play out in their lives, what to watch for, how to manage the difficult ones delicately, how to exploit the positive ones for maximum gain.

I first heard the word succulent in reference to desert flora when I moved to Los Angeles 11 years ago. Before that, I’d always thought they were called cacti. The word succulent struck me as odd because I always associated the word with something juicy, luscious and fleshy.

In contrast to the dark-green rhododendrons and towering pine trees of my youth, these desert plants — with their pale green skin, lean bodies and pointy spikes, growing, it seemed, straight up out of hard, dry rocks — said anything but succulent to me.

Horoscope charts can do much, much more than offer the fun, puzzling or vague predictions we’ve come to expect from newspaper columns. Read with care, compassion and precision, horoscope charts are, in fact, profound tools for self-discovery and self-actualization.

Like depth psychology, depth astrology begins with the assumption that there are things each of us does not know about ourselves — not because of ignorance or stupidity but because our psyches repress some things in order to help us function better in the world. Unfortunately, that healthy function of the psyche can turn on us over time and block us from moving forward with life when we’re otherwise ready.

Carl Jung used the term “shadow” to describe the repressed contents of the personal unconscious — those parts of each of us that we’d rather not admit to harboring. The problem with shadow material is that it comes out when we’re not looking — or, more precisely, it comes out because we’re not looking.

Jung said our shadow elements could not be directly accessed but could, instead, be understood through dreams, complexes, projections and similarly sideways media. So a dream that you’re being chased by a lion might suggest that you haven’t integrated your personal power very well. The perception that someone else is a ruthless gossip might suggest that you look at your own gossiping habits. And so forth.

Having both a child and an insane fear of heights, this picture puts my heart, thick and loud, in my throat:

What about you? Does this look exhilirating, totally doable, challenging or terrifying? Easy? Or perhaps some combination of these? Maybe your reaction is reflected on your 4/10 axis.