Darrelyn Gunzburg
June 2005
My client’s life seemed full and fruitful. A teen romance leading, in her early twenties, to a marriage without financial worries, blessed with four talented children and favoured with the first grandchild sounded like the thread of dream-spinners. Yet she felt her days now lacked substance. Some years earlier her husband had been unfaithful and the marriage was still silted with distrust but from that distrust she now wanted her own life, her own identity. She approached me, aware that her life had jammed, not knowing how to change gears to move forward.
A Starlight paran printout will divide a life into three sections: stars of one’s youth, stars of one’s prime and stars of one’s latter years. If life can extend anywhere from between 70-90 years, then we could say that the first third of life may contain all that occurs up to the first Saturn return, the second third up to the second Saturn return and the final third the years thereafter.
Medieval astrology also claims a technique of looking at a person’s life in terms of thirds, this is known as directing by triplicities and one planet/luminary will symbolise one’s youth, one planet/luminary will symbolise one’s prime and one planet/luminary will symbolise one’s latter years.
The two techniques are quite different, the stellular technique coming from the Egyptian theology of tri-partitioning and the medieval technique coming from the principle of triplicity rulers. However they do reflect each other in the sense that both systems see life in terms of youth, prime and latter years or years of wisdom. So it is interesting to interweave them and look at the fixed star parans that sit underneath my client’s triplicity rulers of the thirds of her life.
We can look at the thirds of life by looking at the triplicity rulers of the main luminary of the horoscope, and since my client has a diurnal chart, we therefore look at the triplicity rulers of her Sun. Her Sun is in Pisces in the 12th house. The medieval triplicity rulers of a water Sun are: Venus, Mars and the Moon in that order.
Her Youth – Venus in Aries
Natally her Venus is in Aries (detriment) conjunct the Ascendant and in the same sign as the Ascendant. It opposes Neptune conjunct the Descendant. We could say that the first third of her life up to her first Saturn return was dominated by the romantic illusion of relationships and that her approach had to, in some way, contain that which was unusual or different (Venus in detriment). My client, of Anglo stock, did this by marrying a man of Chinese decent and culture, thus bringing an “alternate” cultural influence to the marriage. It also brought disillusion and despair (Venus opposite Neptune) when my client learned of her husband’s infidelity.
Starlight shows that there are no fixed stars connected with Venus for my client, so there are no hidden agendas, no added pitfalls of which my client needed to be aware in this part of her life.
Her Middle years – Mars in Leo
Natally my client’s Mars is in Leo conjunct Saturn in detriment. (Saturn is also conjunct the Moon and Pluto but Mars is probably too wide in orb to affect or be affected by them). The Mars-Saturn combination indicates that, when young, there is a limitation on my client’s ability to instigate and take action and move forward in achieving her goals. Such a combination can indicate frustration or blocked anger. However, this was now active in my client’s middle years, from roughly age 30 to 60. By its very nature this combination forces her to develop persistence, stamina and endurance.
When we add the fixed stars that are sitting underneath the Mars we find:
Ras Algethi
Starlight says of this star and planet combination:
Wanting to live by a moral code; strong principles and sense of justice
Arcturus
Starlight says of this star and planet combination:An assertive and at times aggressive leader.
We could say that in this second third of her life my client put a great deal of hard work into raising her children and focusing on their needs, (aspect in the 5th/6th houses) and possibly living vicariously through their achievements (Leo) at the expense of her own talents, resulting in creative frustration. Perhaps now with the last of her children no longer dependent upon her, it was the annoyance of seeing her own creative life passing her by that led her to seek external guidance. Perhaps this was also the indication that my client was approaching her third triplicity ruler, The Moon.
Her Latter years – The Moon in Leo
Natally my client’s Moon is in Leo in the 5th house, caught in the net of Saturn and Pluto. Normally as astrologers we would expect this to give a harder life, a life with less fruitfulness, less happy with children and money or with children who brought her unhappiness and worry. But this Moon, like any planet or luminary in a chart, can be projected onto those emotionally close to her and focus on their expectations. In this case it moulded itself into the expected role of wife and mother and thus gained vicarious creative expression through the achievements of her husband and children. The Moon was thus a “sleeper” in her chart and could have remained so – except that it was destined to be the ruler of the latter part of her life.
Now as she reached her mid-to-late 50’s it stirred, kick-started as it were with the discovery of her husband’s infidelity. But what really awoke in my client were the deep and intense needs of the Leo Moon and what sits underneath this Moon, for also becoming active in the last third of her life is one of the great Royal Stars, Fomalhaut.
Fomalhaut, like the other Royal Stars (Antares, Aldebaran and Regulus), presents the person with a trial or a temptation through which the individual must work before true success can be achieved. All four Royal Stars talk of a road of difficulty and potential danger but offer great success. In this case, Fomalhaut connected with my client’s Moon suggests a highly creative ability touched with a sense of magic based on high ideals or lofty visions but undertaken through a path of emotional difficulty (Moon-Saturn) and intensity (Moon-Pluto) and all of this was being awakened.
Now if this had been activated in her early years, then it would have been extremely difficult, as she would have had to learn maturity and wisdom through isolation, loneliness and separation (Moon-Saturn and Moon-Pluto). Now, however, my client had the support of four adult children and the knowledge of a strong family base around her (the Moon rules the IC).
Armed with this, she has suddenly become aware, during the course of the consultation that she could seek the things that she wanted for herself. What she realized she wanted was her own education. She has become inspired – Fomalhaut – to seek a university degree in social science. She has always thought that a university degree was beyond her, that such a possibility was only open to her husband and her four children. Now she could see that pathway for herself.
The marriage of these two systems yielded for me a vision that I could share with her to help her fulfil the now-encountered burning need of her Leo Moon.
