Nothing makes an astrologer sadder than hearing you say, “Oh, I hate .” One of the favorite arguments against astrology is, “There is no way that everyone in the world can fall into twelve neat categories,” and you’ll get no argument from me. Gross generalizations about the signs of the zodiac are, to me, as baffling as declaring you hate vegetables just because you’ve eaten a couple of overcooked Brussels sprouts over the years.
The fact is, each of us contains every sign of the zodiac in our birth chart. The horoscope is a representation of the entire sky at the time of your birth. Every constellation along the ecliptic, whether it was visible or not from the place of your birth, is fully represented in the twelve houses of your birth chart. So declaring war on any sign of the zodiac is tantamount to disowning part of yourself.
You have the opportunity to experience each sign of the zodiac in your own life. If Leo falls in the sixth house of your chart, for instance, you get to “be a Leo” in sixth house areas of your life (at work, for instance). As each planet moves through a sign, it activates that archetype somewhere in your life. Some, such as the signs of the Sun, Moon, and Ascendant (cusp of the first house) at your birth may speak through you more strongly than others. But all twelve signs are part of your birth chart, and relevant to your life.
Don’t disown or disparage any sign based on past experience. If you’ve had a number of bad experiences with people born with the Sun in a particular sign, you may decide you “just can’t get along” with people of that sign. But who knows how many people with that sign strong in their charts that you’ve met without knowing it, most of whom you probably got along with splendidly? Signs are not people—and all of them are a part of you.
Each sign has a bright side and a dark side
No sign is inherently good or bad. Decades of pop sun-sign astrology have done a grave disservice to nearly all the signs of the zodiac, with a few signs (such as Virgo and Scorpio) suffering grave blows to their reputations as a result of simplistic astrology.
In astrology we regard each of these sign archetypes as symbols of essential roles in the human drama. In the hands of a “good actor,” a sign’s most noble traits naturally emerge. But bad motivations bring out the worst traits of signs as well as people.
A sign has a bright side and a dark side. Traditionally upbeat planets (Venus, Jupiter) or difficult ones(Saturn, Pluto) in a sign can tend to sway the balance of bright and dark one way or another for you, but ultimately, it’s up to you which side shows itself most often in your life. Can you live up to each sign’s best qualities, or will you give in to laziness or malevolence and portray its darker side?
Excerpt from The Essential Guide to Practical Astrology, © 2011 by April Elliott Kent.
