The purpose of this book is to show how to use very basic understanding to say something about oneself or another person from the Sun-Sign, or from the other planets shown in the birth chart, that will bring more joy into everyday life. This ‘how-to’ is demonstrated with many examples, and the reader is encouraged to try for themselves, through exercises given at many points, Many of these exercises consist of questions, and as every person is different, there will be many different ways of answering them. All answers that you come up with are valid for you. The questions are designed as a process, which will draw out both your inner knowledge of what is right for you, and your intuition for others. Throughout the book I have used my own simple diagrams, and added the astrological symbols wherever the names occur, because it allows the other side of the brain to absorb better what we are reading. Personally I always did read pictures more easily than words! (The pictures I drew to express the Signs have been replaced by the publisher, Llewellyn Worldwide, using their own artist – original pictures)
Recognising the Beauty Within
It always seemed to me that, if I couldn’t explain an idea to my young sons, I hadn’t understood it properly myself. So my book, ‘Soul Purpose Astrology’, is as simple as I can make it while including the philosophical ideas that give life meaning for me. Also I learn better from books that are illustrated – and short.
During the early years of my teaching astrology, I was often asked to write it all down because my students couldn’t find a book that expressed it quite the way I do, bringing the spiritual aspects of life into practical every day use. Traveling round the world listening to the people whose charts I read, I have heard many different ways of experiencing any aspect of a birth chart, so I am always expanding my understanding through others’ experience of life.
‘Soul Purpose Astrology‘ presents astrology in its simplest and broadest form. The four elements each having three ways of being expressed explains simply the basis of the twelve Zodiac Signs, yet when the twelve signs are followed in order they describe the journey of humanity in twelve steps from the virgin spirit of archetypal Aries to quiet mastery through Pisces.
The planets can be seen as a rainbow of colours from white light, a spectrum of the uses to which we put life energy. The Sun, Moon and planets out as far as Saturn can be related to seven of the energy centres in the body, describing the inner experience of being human, yet the fact that each planet can be in one of twelve signs shows clearly our differences from each other, even though we have the same basic system.
The broader concerns of human life – freedom, spirituality and transformation of the human species – are introduced as messages from the outer planets as great guides. Chiron is one of those guides, even though it is so small. On a personal level, I see Chiron as the healer in each of us, as well as the wound that never quite heals, and my book offers questions you can ask yourself to discover Chiron’s meaning for you.
Life goes on all around us. While we endeavour to interact with what we perceive, we are generally looking at it all through our own surrounding space. That space is full of our memories, expectations, fears, assumptions, and so on, which tend to colour or obscure what might really be there: it requires quite a mental stretch to see anything that doesn’t conform to what we already know. I have described the astrological ‘houses’ as our ‘windows’ on life and they show us, by the signs on their cusps in our birth charts, how each aspect of our daily life is affected by our feelings about it.
It makes more sense to me that the vibration of life is powered by purpose, and that each one of us has our own personal thread of that purpose – our spiritual direction through this incarnation. There is a direction across the middle of the birth chart, facing the North Node of the Moon, which gives clues to this spiritual direction. The dates of the Nodes’ sign-changes are given in the book, so that you can see the Nodal signs at your birth date, and read about the clues to your own spiritual direction.
Books written about astrology offer the views of the writer and I have written my views. In addition, throughout the book ‘exercises’ are offered in question form to suggest ways you might like to explore your life developing your own views as well. Every view is valid from the position of the viewer in that moment, and every experience adds to the sum total of human experience, changing the whole in the process.
In order to feel the love from our spiritual source, we need to accept ourselves as we are and learn to appreciate our uniqueness and inner beauty. Soul Purpose Astrology shows how every planet in any sign represents the potential for a spiritually beautiful energy to flow through. Once we recognize the beauty within, it is a small step to increasing the beauty in the lives of those around us. My chosen task – one that fills me with pleasure and satisfaction – is to help in recognising the beauty within.
This book is out of print at present, but still available on Amazon, Abebooks.co.uk, Alibris.com, etc.
Llewellyn Publications, PO Box 64383, St. Paul, MN 55164-0383;
2002, paperback, 210 pp. 15cm x 23cm (6″ x 9″), $14.95, ISBN 0-7387-0221-8