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It is the day of your birth - square one - the true beginning of your life on Earth. You emerge from your mother, draw your first breath, and all of the presences in the room bombard your senses - from family members to the midwife, doctor, or nurse who helped bring you into this world. You engage immediately with the reality of being here. Sounds, smells, sensations surround you.

Welcome to Earth: A Brief
Introduction to the Planets

Your infant body was sensitive not only to the atmosphere of the room, but to the ultimate life giver: the Sun. Imagine the energy of the Sun as it travels at the speed of light, crossing 93 million miles to reach you. Somehow you receive its signature, as well as those of all the planets in the solar system. You have inherited a life code and a cosmic clock from the larger family of the solar system. Like the genetic code you inherited from your family of origin, this code encourages particular styles of growth and instinctual exploration.

Meanwhile, your cosmic clock, following the rhythms of the planets, encourages you to grow, slow down, or speed up at particular times over the rest of your life. The content of what you grow is entirely up to you. Your cosmic family supports that growth through your planetary instincts.

This chapter's purpose is to familiarize you with the symbolic content of the planets, but you can also begin to become visually familiar with the planetary glyphs through the birthchart below. Take a moment, if you like, to look at each planet's glyph and then find it in the sample birthchart shown here (or your own birthchart, if available). With each glyph is a brief introduc- tion to the instinct of the planet it represents. The planets will speak their purposes at more length through the rest of this chapter.

The SUN is your instinct to shine from the center of your life story.*

The MOON is your instinct to have a home.*

MERCURY is your instinct to communicate.

VENUS is your instinct to love.

MARS is your instinct to act.

JUPITER is your instinct to philosophize, to sum it all up.

SATURN is your instinct to commit.

CHIRON is your instinct to heal.**

URANUS is your instinct to express truth.

NEPTUNE is your instinct to express soul.

PLUTO is your instinct to express power.

The planets above set into motion a life story, answering the question Who am I? in multiple ways. Two seemingly obscure but significant symbols - the north and south nodes of the Moon - reveal two other important instincts. The south node ' symbolizes your instinct to ask, "What have I inherited from my past?" The north node e symbolizes your instinct to ask, "Where am I going?"

* Although the Sun and Moon are not planets, we refer to them as such in astrology.

** Chiron, formerly thought to be an asteroid, has since been declared a planetoid due to the fact that it has characteristics of both a planet and an asteroid. Discovered in 1977 between the orbit of Saturn and Uranus, it is given equal weight to the planets as an influence by astrologers who study it.

The Sun
The instinct to shine from the center of your life story

When you took on the signature of the Sun at the moment of birth, you became an emissary of that Sun. Just as the Sun is the center of the solar system, the Sun's placement in your birthchart symbolizes the optimal expression of your true center. It is the guid- ing light of your story. Visualize a wheel with spokes that meet at the center. Within your inner family, the Sun is the "I" in charge of the entire wheel - the gravitational center of self. As you step outside the privacy of your inner family into your village, the Sun is the shaft of light at the center of the town square where everyone instinctively gathers - a central force pulling everyone together as a community, creating the unique identity of that town.

The Sun's purpose is to convince you that this is the only life you're ever going to have and so you better occupy it fully, play director. No one else can occupy your director's chair for you. The Sun is the functional ego. When you wake from a deep sleep, that conscious waking state you enter every day of your life is your Sun - the constant presence of the "I."

Find the Sun 3 at work in your life by completing this sentence:

Above all else, I want to ___________.

Intuitive assignment:

Now let's explore the same question with the heart, not the head, to encourage the intuitive voice of the Sun to speak to you about how it operates in your life. Take a moment to relax and let go of the shoulds that may enter your mind about what you "should" want. Then imagine the following and note your experiences in your journal.

I am at the center of a wheel with many spokes. At that center, I am the "I" that is my constant waking companion, the "I" that oversees my entire day. Occupying the center of the wheel, I remember the constancy of the Sun, at the center of the solar system. I feel the warmth of that Sun as it encourages me to grow a true center, a true identity to which I can be loyal, as a life path.

Dialogue with this center, as you occupy it, asking: "What is my central purpose today? What is my central purpose on most days?"

Imagine your answer to these questions as a constant fire, the flame at your core. Stand close to the light of the fire. It says to you: You have a right to exist. You have a right to survive, and thrive. You have a purpose.

The Sun advises you: Celebrate your center, the precious chord only you can play.

Now ask yourself again:

Above all else, I want to ____________________________________.

Your Sun knows the answer to this question.

Copyright © 2003 by Elizabeth Rose Campbell.

Tags: Astrology

About the Author

Graduated form the University of North Caroline at Chapel Hill with a degree in journalist. Though she initially worked as a writer for a literary magazine, The Sun: A Magazine of Ideas, Elizabeth was quickly drawn to the human potential movement and became a program coordinator for the Omega Institute of holistic Studies in 1982. Based on earlier astrological studies with Steve Forrest, she began giving informal astrological consultations to Omega staff and faculty. Elizabeth became the first astrologer invited to offer consultations to participants in their Wellness Center.