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Using Astrology to Understand Your Children   Part II Date Published: by Trish MacGregor

 

 

Is your Aries toddler running the neighborhood? Is your Sagittarian second-grader rounding up the stray cats on your block and bringing them home? Has your Aquarian teenager started a donation program for the homeless in your town?

As a parent, you undoubtedly recognized your child's uniqueness at a very young age. Perhaps your child spoke before her first birthday or didn't speak until she was four. Maybe your son or daughter skipped the crawling stage altogether and went straight from the crib to an upright walk. Perhaps your four-year-old daughter is painting like Van Gogh or playing the piano like Mozart. Maybe your son has a magical way with animals.

Your child's uniqueness, however it shows up, is apparent in her birth chart, as a pattern depicted by a particular arrangement of planets.

Your Aries toddler, for instance, may have his Moon in Cancer, which makes him fiercely attached to his home, his neighborhood, his turf. Your Sagittarian second-grader may have her Moon in Pisces, which fills her with compassion for strays and outcasts of any species. And if your humanitarian Aquarian has her Moon in Leo, it might explain why her donation program for the homeless hit the front page of your local newspaper.

While the Sun represents your child's overall personality, his ego, his outer radiance, the Moon symbolizes his emotions. It describes his emotional temperament, how he acts and reacts emotionally, what kind of relationship he has with his mother. It also provides hints about his early childhood, his domestic situation later in life, and even the state of his health and the kind of work at which he may excel.

The sign of your child's Moon gives you, as a parent, insight into his inner world, into what makes him tick. The Sun/Moon combination is key to understanding how you might guide your child towards his greatest fulfillment. When these combinations are coupled with your child's rising sign or Ascendant, you have a powerful and insightful tool for understanding your child.

I started working with children's charts because of my daughter. Since the time she was very young, I noticed definite patterns in her friendships, so I began collecting birth information on her playmates and gradually expanded by database to include classmates, teachers, and significant others in her life. The picture that emerged deepened my appreciation of astrology as a tool for depicting broad personality patterns in children and for understanding their spiritual needs, what I call the "cosmic kid."

So, in Part II, let's take a look at the sun signs Cancer through Pisces from a cosmic slant.

The Cosmic Cancer

The cosmic connection for a Cancer occurs through the tribal mind. It begins in childhood with her family and gradually expands to include her immediate community, the society in which she lives, and quite often her country as well. It is through this tribal association that she expresses her spirituality.

She's the type who may start a food drive for the homeless in her community. She may be an animal rights activist or involved in political issues that directly reflect her nurturing qualities.

Cancer pursues her spiritual beliefs wholeheartedly, regardless of what they are. If she attends a particular church, then she's as dedicated to it as she is to her family. If her beliefs are nontraditional, then she explores them in depth, through books, workshops, seminars. Her natural intuition flourishes and deepens once she realizes that her emotions are her conduit to spiritual evolution and transformation.

The Cosmic Leo

A Leo's date with the cosmos unfolds dramatically, with flamboyance and style. His need for creative expression, whatever form it takes, is the fuel that propels him to achieve. Action and initiative are the vehicles that get him to where he wants to go.

If Leo's ego plows toward his goals with all the subtlety of a semi, he won't get anywhere fast. Something unexpected trips him up, a glitch in the works. He backslides. He stagnates. Fortunately, Leo despises stagnation. It's the place where he dies a piece at a time. It gets him moving again and he does so with a renewed sense of what is important and how he can attain it.

The Cosmic Virgo

As an earth sign, Virgo's approach to spirituality is apt to be practical. But pragmatism doesn't prevent her from delving into the invisible, more mystical realms. As a child, she is naturally open to them and unconsciously seeks a holistic framework for the left-brain concerns that often rule her life.

As Virgo learns to use her critical thinking to explore spiritual issues, inner doorways open. She discovers that intuition can be developed, relied upon, and used to enhance the quality of her life. By recognizing intuition as a viable tool, her confidence blooms, her path expands, and she truly begins to shine.

As a parent, one of the ways you can encourage your Virgo to develop her intuition is through simple games. My daughter and I have played a color game since she was old enough to identify colors, in which one of us acts as the sender and the other is the receiver. The sender thinks of a color and tries to communicate it the receiver. This works best when we're both relaxed, but we've even played it in the car with astonishing results. Intuition is like a muscle; the more you exercise it, the stronger it grows.

By learning to recognize and act on hunches, your Virgo child's inner and outer worlds flow into alignment.

The Cosmic Libra

Some Libras take to organized religion. They enjoy the beauty of the ritual and tradition and like the social interaction that grows from a common belief system. Other Libras could care less about religion and seek spiritual fulfillment through nontraditional venues. They may infuse their marriage or their art with spirituality.

As a cardinal air sign, Libra's approach to spiritual issues is apt to be intellectual, motivated by his questions about his relationships. At first, he culls information through books and the web, then perhaps ventures out into the social arena, where he attends workshops and lectures and talks with other people who hold similar beliefs. He weighs and evaluates everything, always aware of all sides of the issue. Then he makes up his own mind. Libra rarely tries to push his spiritual beliefs on anyone else. He hopes, of course, that his partner shares his beliefs, but if not, that's okay, too.

The Cosmic Scorpio

In less aware Scorpios, spirituality may be a moot issue. The emphasis in life falls on the sign's darker side, sex, drugs, a fast noir life with a morbid edge to it. This can be said of any sun sign, but it seems to be especially true of Scorpios.

In a spiritually aware Scorpio soul, spirituality is the primary focus. Its manifestation varies, of course, but these people are usually deeply intuitive and concerned with unraveling profound mysteries. Their capacity for personal transformation is tremendous.

The Cosmic Sagittarius

Jupiter and the ninth house, the ruling planet and natural home for Sagittarius, confer an innate interest in spiritual and philosophical issues. Sagittarians attempt to see the larger picture, but often get locked into a narrow expression of spirituality because of their tendency to believe their way is the right way. In practical terms, this can produce a religious fanatic or a spiritual pioneer.

The spiritual pioneer is a true seeker. His spiritual beliefs may involve foreign cultures: gurus in India, missionary work, the study of mythology in far flung corners of the world. Even astral travel is fair game to him.

The Cosmic Capricorn

This sign's need for structure dictates her approach to spiritual issues. If she pursues organized religion, then she does it with full commitment and involvement. If she follows a nontraditional course, she establishes her own parameters and rules. Either way, the point for Capricorn is to somehow use her spiritual explorations to deepen her understanding of herself and her role in the larger world.

An evolved Capricorn possesses the stamina and drive to achieve change in the world. But to do this she must first harness Saturn's restrictive nature so that it works for her rather than against her. With Saturn ruling her Sun sign, she may feel that she's struggling upstream at times, unable to see or effect any change in her own life. But once she realizes it's possible to pour her energy into her vision, she achieves her ambitions.

The Cosmic Aquarius

The natural home for Aquarius is the eleventh house of friendships and group associations, so this area is vitally important for his spiritual development. Some of his closest friendships are with people whom he has known and loved in past lives.

In many instances, he will recognize these individuals at some level when he meets them. These "karmic appointments" may not always be pleasant, but they are always vital to his evolution as an individual and to his ultimate spiritual fulfillment.

If an Aquarian is raised within an organized religion, it's likely that he breaks free of it at some point in his life. As a parent, this may not be to your liking, but he needs to find his own way, his own path. If you respect his choices, then he respects yours in return and your spiritual differences will never injure your relationship.

Aquarians tend to be non-judgmental and tolerant of other people's spiritual beliefs. If they don't agree with your beliefs, they won't voice it unless you ask. But if you ask, they'll give you the unvarnished truth as they see it. More than any other sign, Aquarius possesses the innate wisdom and capacity to transform the world, to usher in a new age in which equality exists for all people.

The Cosmic Pisces

The natural home for Pisces is the twelfth house, where the disowned parts of ourselves are stashed away. No matter how great a job you do as the parent of a Pisces child, she will have twelfth house stuff to work through in her life. She will have issues.

Some of these issues may be worked out within institutional settings. She may, for instance, work for a time in a prison, hospital, nursing home, or similar environment in which service and a degree of martyrdom are required. She may work behind the scenes in some artistic endeavor, as a ghostwriter, a movie director, a set designer. She may write murder mysteries or read tarot cards. Whatever form her work takes, it somehow allows her to confront the buried issues in her life and, hopefully, to unravel them and finally put them to rest.

Metaphysics are a part of her life at one level or another. If she doesn't explore this area, then time and again certain patterns are repeated that force her to rely on her intuition, to develop and embrace it. Like her water cousin, Scorpio, she possesses a tremendous capacity for personal transformation. But unlike Scorpio, she can be so adaptable that she becomes a chameleon and loses herself in the process of transforming.

This is the kid, after all, who may tap into her past lives with the ease the rest of us bring to driving the interstate. She has the ability to slip out of her body at will and map the world she encounters. She has the potential to break barriers in the arts. If only she can make up her mind.

 

© Copyright: Trish MacGregor

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Other articles by Trish MacGregor

MacGregor, TrishUsing Astrology to Understand Your Children - Part I

MacGregor, TrishInterview With Trish MacGregor - Part I

MacGregor, TrishInterview With Trish MacGregor - Part II