We will look at the astrological chart and how it functions physically in the earth body, the psyche and ego structure, and the spiritual esoteric level of awareness. How do we evolve our consciousness throughout time?
The Physical Earth Body —
The Self — A combination of psyche and ego (ego being the conscious realm as signified by the ascendant), the psyche being the conscious and unconscious. We are born into the cross of matter and, at the time of birth, are fixated in an ego-building chart with 12 other environmental and housing concerns that respond to our involuntariness and spend time trying to sway us into a formation.
The ego is needed to respond and ‘not’ to react, hopefully spontaneously, as a child (so says the Bible), so as not to form too many sub-personalities. Let’s give yourself the number 1 personality that is free-flowing and typical of your ascendant, depending on its mutability, cardinality, or fixity.
The number 2 personality has been ‘conditioned’ by the chart/12 houses and all aspects to the Ascendant (Rising Sign) and shows the nature of the ego from birth forward. Look at your chart and see what your ascendant and all planets nearby have to say about your ego/self, and watch closely as to your approach to the unconscious and the imaginable realm. Do you move about freely? Does your ego set discerning pathways by which you can maneuver through your chart? And by the way, the charts of others?
Remember when we read the charts of others that we are speaking to the ‘soul’ through the ego…and sometimes it is a treacherous path if we are too subjectively involved with our own egos!
The Anima is the ‘Soul’ of man and is seen through the female side (which can be male or female). I associate the Soul connection in relationships with the Moon/Venus and all heavily-aspected connections in the male’s chart through those two directions. The anima in a man’s chart is his inner female and can be reflected back to him more easily when there is a Moon/Venus connection through another’s chart. This is critical, especially in love relationships, as the female in the relationship will be relating to the male’s anima, whether she likes it or not, as that is all he can see/love her for.
So let us look closely at the male Moon/Venus in the men’s charts and at how they aspect your chart in synastry. We must notice the attention we pay, and those that grab our energies and see what part of them lies within us.
I will use my own Sun and Moon analysis, as well as my 7th house, whose co-rulers (Saturn/Uranus) lie in the 10th house. I am mesmerized by strong-willed and connected females more in a positive way, and have spent much of my life devoted to hanging onto those images AS self, but the shadow part of me is equally put off and negatively hypnotized by the ‘victim’, the ‘helpless’, and the ‘needy’ female opposite.
So I had to take the nature of the Sun in Leo and find out what the oppositions to those adjectives/qualities would be, not Uranus. I have acted out my willful freedom issues by walking out of 7th house relationships, not facing my own dependency, my own neediness, fears, helplessnes,s and most of all my own sadness. To this day, it creates an intense amount of work on my shadow side. My eighth house, opposing Moon in Libra (second), is, of course, how Aphrodite will live with her sexuality…as I watch her shadow nymph-like creatures going about creating magic.
PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES CORRELATED
From an astrological perspective, I would like to explain the introversion/extroversion as it applies to the chart mandala as well as the intuition, thinking, sensation, feeling functions and how they are seen in the chart wheel structure. Some elements and planetary placements in different house positions, aspects and configurations are more adaptable to an intuitive understanding and aligned with the ‘stream of consciousness.’
According to Jung’s typology, we classify according to attitude type and function type. Regarding attitude type, there are two choices: extraverted, in which the individual’s libido (primal structure) tends to be directed from oneself towards objects in the outer world, and introverted, in which the libido tends to be directed from objects in the outer world into oneself. Acknowledging that neither of these categories is fixed nor exclusive, Jung sought merely to describe in a practical, observable way what someone’s dominant or typical attitude was toward people, the world, and oneself.
We look at a chart wheel and make some generalizations about the introverted/extroverted nature described in the intro. The introverted chart will have the majority of planets below the horizon, indicating that the person with this chart will take matters into account on a subjective level and may or may not manifest them outwardly. The predominance of female planets (earth/water) in a chart will also show a subjective nature, but not necessarily introversion. The extroverted chart, on the other hand will have a predominance of planets in the upper half of the chart and/or a predominance of air and fire.
As always, a synthesis of all aspects in a chart needs to be considered, and flexibility in the nature of a chart, progressions, and transits needs to be accounted for when analyzing these extroverted/introverted natures. We shall now look at the intuitive, thinking, sensation, and feeling aspects of the natal chart. We categorize these types into rational and irrational functions. The two rational types are thinking and feeling. We use the term rational because both of these functions serve as criteria for organizing and making decisions. The thinking function organizes and decides according to analysis and logic, (planetary placements in air, i.e., Libra, Gemini, Aquarius), while the feeling functions organize and decide based on one’s values and self worth, i.e. (Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces). Feeling function should not be synonymous with emotion; instead, it should fall into the realm of morality and values, including one’s ethical sense of situations. Using the term ‘rational’ for feeling types in the Jungian sense might confound modern-day people (especially thinking types!) who assume feelings and emotions are always irrational aspects of psychic life meant to be controlled or resolved. Thinking, if looking at only placements in a chart, will be in the lower left-hand quadrant as one looks at a natal chart, taking into account the combinations and aspects of both air planets and air house placements in a solar chart. The feeling section of a chart will be the lower right quadrant and will depend largely on the placement of water planets, and or water houses, i.e., the fourth house is largely the rooted values/feelings coming from home and family in the past and in the here and now.
We will move then to the discussion of irrational functions. The two irrational functions, in Jungian terminology,y are intuition and sensation. Intuitive types function on the basis of one’s unconscious experience and perceptions, that immaterial realm of symbols, images, and archetypes that many are unaware of but which an intuitive person uses as the foundation for action and experience. The intuitive function is indicated by a predominance of planets in the upper left-hand quadrant of the natal chart and by planets in fire signs, i.e., Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius. The sensation type of person primarily functions through experience of the concrete, physical world, a down-to-earth sense of existence in the world and unto oneself. This type is primarily seen in the upper right-hand quadrant of a chart, represented by earth planets, Capricorn, Taurus, and Virgo. Again, one must synthesize to see the blend in a chart and work with the integration of all types into the one personality/ego structure, which is the overall outer wheel of a chart as read from the ascendant.
Basically, using Jungian types, there are eight basic types of personalities:
-
Extraverted Thinking – Strategic planner, logical structure, outward decision-making.
-
Introverted Thinking – Internal logic, reflective analysis, abstract thought.
-
Extraverted Feeling – Social synchronization, relational harmony, expressive warmth.
-
Introverted Feeling – Deep values, inner sense of right and wrong, reflective empathy.
-
Extraverted Sensation – Present-moment focus, sensory awareness of the outer world.
-
Introverted Sensation – Memory-linked sensory impressions, internal recall of experiences.
-
Extraverted Intuition – Possibilities, pattern recognition in the external environment.
-
Introverted Intuition – Internal vision, future-oriented insights, symbolic thinking.