Depth Astrology

When my dad was a young man, he spent summers working in the canneries and crab traps in Alaska to pay for college.

One day he and a Norwegian gentleman, who was spending some time on the trap with him, rowed ashore for a break from the waves and the wide-open sea. They spied a group of mother bears relaxing in the river — splashing, bathing and lolling about on sunny rocks. One mother bear’s cubs kept tumbling down the hill and splashing into the water, only to be swatted away by their mother. They retreated back up the hill, waited until her back was turned, then tumbled down into the water again.

After three or four turns at this game, the mother bear got frustrated and charged her cubs, growling and scolding at them. She turned her back — and the cubs chased after her yet again. The Norwegian gentleman — apparently trying to help the mother bear — bent down, picked up a rock and, with no warning at all, hurled it at the cubs. My dad yelped a garbled protest and ran for his life, the Norwegian and the mother bear in hot pursuit. The humans barely made it to the boat and back out to sea.

Now, most people are aware of this basic life lesson, but just to be clear: You have to be very, very careful with other people’s children.

I’ve been thinking about this lately because of the effects of transiting Saturn in Virgo. It’s currently criss-crossing our two-year-old son’s natal Moon and my own progressed Saturn, both in the first house. In other words, the boy and I are being challenged right now to define, shore up and secure our identities vis-a-vis one another (Saturn: the mother; Moon: the child).

So there is a lot of jockeying for position, much back-and-forth of “I want,” “I need” and “You can’t have” — from both of us. Limits are being set. Lines are being drawn. Laws are being laid down. Tears are being shed. The sweet, snuggly oneness of infancy has dissolved into memory.

At the same time, it is thrilling to see his growth. He’s expressive and intentional. He identifies what he wants and sets out to get it. He’s learning, it seems, in leaps and bounds — puzzles, colors, shapes, numbers. Where things go. What words mean. How to use his body. How to control it.

Now, I banked on both these developments even before the boy was born. I knew about the so-called “terrible twos” and even felt excited to see how we would negotiate the terrain. And my husband is a wonderful parenting partner; we’ve fallen into a great tag-teaming system to make sure we can both give our best and avoid the overwhelm that can come easily with parenting.

What I didn’t bank on was the difficulty of bringing a third parent — a daycare provider — into the mix. Saturn is getting my ire up, bringing out the mother bear when I watch how his teachers (another aspect of Saturn) interact with their two-year-old charges. And I don’t always like what I see.

Saturn’s instinct is toward protection and safety; this can sometimes result in defensiveness and growling. Lately, these instincts in me have been directed toward the militant approach one of his teachers takes toward art.

I observe her over-directing the kids’ process, criticizing their methods and inhibiting their free expression. This morning she wouldn’t let them turn over the construction paper they were painting to look at the other side. She wouldn’t let them glue pieces of dried popcorn onto their paper one at a time because she “needed” (her word) them to drop a handful onto the glue all at once. This morning, she barked to one of them, “I didn’t tell you to explore. I told you to work.”

These are two-year-olds.

And as much as I might get on this child about eating his vegetables, wearing a jacket when it’s cold and going back to sleep when he wakes at three a.m., I would never presume to tell him how he should make art — express his feeling life in tangible, living, breathing form. Art is self-expression, any time of life, but especially at two years old. The Saturnine response to his core emotional needs he must be experiencing right now cannot only be coming from the limits set by me, the chief Saturn figure in his life, and his father. It is also coming from other teacher/mother figures.

And when it’s done poorly, when it’s done in a way that threatens his playfulness and expressiveness and sense of competence and sense of self, when it’s intrusive and know-it-all and demanding, that brings out the mother bear in me. It fuels a feeling of being hunted, of having my protective, nurturing, growth-encouraging approach stalked and choked by someone who is not comfortable with fluid limits, someone who must be in control all the time, someone who seems to fear play and spontaneity and self-expression — all those constricted, intolerant, shadowy aspects of Saturn — someone who would throw rocks at someone else’s bear cub when it’s engaged in play.

The Huber way of analyzing family dynamics through the birth chart dovetails beautifully with attachment theory — and adds one critical dimension that mainstream psychology has so far only been able to lightly sketch out.

By my own definition, attachment is the ability of the child to develop a sense of security and self (or not) through relationship to the parents (or parental figures). Without a strong, secure, positive relationship, the child’s security and sense of self founder. Insecurity and low self-esteem result. Relationships throughout life are deeply and directly impacted by the quality of attachment in the child’s early years.

There are three basic “attachment types” that children (and the adults they become) exhibit:

• Secure attachment results from parents’ consistent and empathic attunement with the child. These children — and the adults they become — are likely to be curious, engaged and generally not fearful of relationships. They are playful, empathic, resilient and resourceful.
  
• Avoidant attachment stems from lack of parental attunement and from perhaps inappropriate demands for the child’s independence. These children can grow into adults whose defenses include disengagement or lack of commitment; some may display anger, antipathy or compulsive self-reliance.
  
• Ambivalent attachment is rooted in the parents’ inconsistent response to the child — sometimes warm, sometimes cold. These personalities can be reactive, volatile or anxious as well as co-dependent or not fully self-reliant.

Psychologists can determine developing attachment styles by watching children’s response to separation from the parent(s). Interventions can be taught that help the parent better and more consistently attune to their child’s emotional and physical needs — and so possibly change the course of the child’s lifelong relationship style, self-esteem and sense of security in the world. This is an amazing development!

But Huber astrology can contribute to intervention through prevention with a thoughtful and sensitive reading of the child’s chart. My caveat is that it’s not an exact or foolproof match for the three attachment types noted above — consciousness, environment and other astrological factors certainly impact attachment styles and how relationships develop. However, my instinct is that the Huber reading of family dynamics in the birth chart can help us detect the child’s inherent tendencies in the area of attachment. For example:

• Secure attachment may have the best chance when there is an indirect connection between Moon (child) and Sun (father) and/or Saturn (mother). An indirect aspect ensures a connection that allows approach and attunement — but one that has enough slack to allow the child to grow into himself over time. This jives with the notion that secure attachment is rooted in the “secure base” — a sense of safety provided by the parent, and eventually internalized by the child, that allows the youngster to venture ever-further out into the world: a growing practice of healthy separation, identity formation and individuation.
• Avoidant attachment may loom when there are no connections between Moon and the other two ego planets. This is because the parents expect (even unconsciously) the child to be independent and self-reliant right from the get-go. The child has the early impression that he or she is alone in the world, that the safety net must be completely created and maintained by himself. (However, I have seen children with no such connections whose parents are warm, connected and attuned.)
• Ambivalent attachment may occur when Moon makes a direct aspect to Sun or Saturn. The obvious danger here, particularly with Sun-Moon or Saturn-Moon conjunctions, is enmeshment — that is, the tendency to get so wrapped up in each other’s needs, wants and identity that it’s hard to separate the parent from the child. But enmeshment does not mean attunement (sometimes precisely the opposite!), so while the child may sometimes feel attuned to, at other times his or her needs may be so subsumed by the parents’ that the child can feel lost and confused. The closeness feels nice, but there’s something amiss in it.

It’s important to note that a child can display one attachment style with one parent but something entirely different with the other — further validating the Huber model that considers father and mother separately. And yet, of course, there are a lot of other factors to consider when attachment issues are afoot, including placement of the ego planets within the chart, strength and sign of each planet, interceptions and so forth. Still, simply observing the aspect relationships of the ego planets may help us conduct intervention so early that it could legitimately be called prevention. Consciousness can go a long way in mitigating what could otherwise become an insecure attachment.

As I believe early attachment experiences are the root of emotional stability, there may be no more important consideration when reading a chart, whether that chart is for a newborn or a wizened elder — because no matter how old, having our particular attachment style understood, interpreted and validated can only be healing.

Has anyone out there observed the intersection of astrology and attachment types — either formally or anecdotally? If so, I’d love to know!