Part III of III

Content warning: discussion of sexual abuse and incest.

In my last blog about astrology and ancestry, I talked about how we can see astrological patterns repeat through the generations, like the three direct ancestors in my mother-line who all have Sun conjunct Mars. I also looked at how siblings might favor one parent or the other by comparing my grandmother’s chart to that of her sister’s. Finally, I considered how astro DNA often skips a generation, using the example of my mother’s Pisces Moon and Virgo Sun, a placement she shares with the grandfather she never met.

The art of William Blake is suiting my mood for this heavy blog. So please enjoy this array of images from the public domain!

In this blog I want to make some suggestions for how to work with ancestral astrology when there is no discernible pattern of inheritance. Let’s say your Mom’s chart looks nothing like yours, and grandma’s chart is another animal altogether. Does that mean there’s no psychic inheritance? I imagine in certain cases this might be true. For example, the mother who gave you up for adoption, or the father whose involvement in your existence ended after a one-night stand in 1972, might not have passed you a lot of psychic DNA. In that case, it makes sense that you’d have more astrological connection to your adoptive parents or other caretakers. However, before you give up on the quest to find your astro DNA in family charts, you can first analyze chart synastry across the generations.

Synastry is the study of how one person’s birth chart impacts another’s. For example, let’s say your natal Jupiter is exactly conjunct your friend’s Sun. Don’t be surprised if you’re always buying that person lunch and providing them with career advice and opportunities. Magnanimous Jupiter lives to support and guide others, even if normally you’re more guarded. If your Sun or Moon interacts with another person’s Venus, they’ll immediately feel like a friend, and it will be a challenge to think of them in a bad light, even if they rob you blind. If your Mars interacts with someone else’s personal planets, you could find yourself competing with them or acting uncharacteristically aggressive.

I love synastry because it undermines the idea that we always have a coherent or consistent personality. There’s an alchemical principle inherent in synastry: every individual person’s chemistry will produce varying results when it interacts with your chart. In some ways, this is an obvious statement. If you’re a liberal college professor, you might have to white-knuckle it at the DMV if you’re seated next to the Trump guy talking loudly on his phone. You have an automatic “chemical reaction” of tension and hostility toward him. You might assume that you will have that same chemical reaction to anyone wearing a MAGA hat. But the weird thing is, you won’t. Imagine another Trump guy who is cracking relatable jokes to ease the tension in the room, and passing out snacks. You might immediately assess that guy as a working-class hero who has simply been misled by a toxic news media. You might even imagine that in another context, you could be friends. Unbeknownst to you, his Jupiter-Moon conjunction to your natal Venus is helping him appear in the best possible light.

Synastry is painstaking work, which is the reason that my couple’s “Alchemy” readings are my priciest offering! Instead of using “Person A” and “Person B,” I’ll use friends Barb and Star as my examples here. First I look for all the aspects that Barb’s chart makes to Star’s chart to see how Star is being impacted. Then I reverse the focus and look at all the aspects that Star’s chart is making to Barb’s chart to see how Barb is being impacted. Yes, they’re the same aspects, but you learn something different when you analyze who is giving versus who is receiving the energy.

Let’s say Barb’s Saturn is conjunct Star’s natal Sun. It’s a strong aspect that could indicate a long-term, bosom-buddy type of friendship. But Barb, the Saturn person, might take a more disapproving attitude to Star, and have goals or an agenda for her. Barb might find herself in the role of the “rock,” the reliable one in the relationship, while Star has the luxury to express herself and assert her will (solar qualities). So from Barb’s perspective, she’s the serious one and Star is a flake. Star, for her part, might appreciate Barb’s steadfast loyalty, but also think she’s a little dry and inhibited. She might believe that Barb worries too much and is too possessive of the friendship - Barb’s Saturn feels heavy on Star’s natal Sun. In other words, who’s giving and who’s receiving matters a lot in synastric comparison. (OK I know I’ve sat through the movie Barb and Star go to Vista Del Mar, probably on an airplane, but I don’t remember any of it. Their names just floated up to my consciousness because they make half-rhyme with chart, so don’t consider this an endorsement!)

You can perform a synastric analysis of any two charts. You can look at yourself in comparison to your mother, your sister, or your boyfriend. You can see if you have synastric hits to the birth chart of the USA or the chart of the college you’d like to attend. My only hard and fast rule with synastry is that it can’t predict a future relationship. You can’t do synastry on your chart and Howard Stern’s chart and decide that you’re soulmates, if you’ve never met Howard Stern. So before doing any type of synastry, check to see if you already have a connection with that person. Synastry can tell you about the quality of the connection you already have, or where things might go if the relationship deepens, but it’s not a reliable indicator of a future connection.

Why? OK well I thought Howard Stern was a pretty bizarre example for me to use since he’s a weird-looking guy with an obnoxious personality. But I took the intuitive hint and looked up his chart. Sure enough, his Sun, Venus, and Mercury are all conjunct my natal Moon! This is one of those inter-aspects that’s like, “Shyeah, you guys should totally get married.” The astro match-makers of old loved to see a woman’s Moon exactly conjunct a man’s Sun, there’s no better aspect, they said! But here’s the thing. Howard Stern is about 20 years older than me, he lives in another state, and he’s already married. So am I. It’s possible that we’d get along like a house on fire if we ever met, but this “relationship” is deeply lacking in context. There’s practically none. Add to this the reality that about one 1 in 12 people has a Capricorn Moon like mine, and the synastric buzz starts to seem a lot less relevant. Even if you applied a whole bunch of other filters, like “American women in X age-range,” and “Capricorn Moons between 20 and 25 degrees,” I’d still have an astronomical amount of competition for being Howard Stern’s soulmate. Synastry can’t predict a future relationship. So stop asking that Tinder guy for his astro deets before you’ve even met!

(Also, as more proof that there’s something to synastry - I did have a bit of a crush on Howard Stern in my mid-teens! I was also a righteously enraged militant feminist, and yet somehow I could stomach watching Stern humiliate and objectify women on his TV show. I was embarrassed about my tolerance for his shitty behavior and kept my fandom a secret. I am not at all surprised to learn that Stern’s Venus-Mercury-Sun conjunction stirred up my natal Moon, encouraging me to see him in a forgiving and understanding light. Humans are weird and our likes and dislikes are irrational, and chart synastry has a lot to do with that).

OK so how can synastric analysis support ancestral astrology? Essentially, we are looking for repeating patterns. I’m fortunate to have access to the birth details of my father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather in the direct paternal line. My great-great-grandfather, John Turner Finley, the trainman, was the subject of my first blog about astrology and ancestry. All these direct ancestors were named John, so I’ve assigned them each a Roman numeral starting with John I, my great-great-grandfather.

Here are the results of my index of each person’s Sun, Moon, and South Node. As you can see, there are few repeating signs among the leading lights of Sun and Moon. Only my father and John Turner Finley’s chart share a Sagittarius Moon:

John I: Scorpio Sun, Sagittarius Moon, Aquarius South Node

John II: Libra Sun, Aries Moon, Capricorn South Node

John III: Gemini Sun, Scorpio Moon, Gemini South Node

John IV: Aries Sun, Sagittarius Moon, Sagittarius South Node

Thea: Virgo Sun, Capricorn Moon, Taurus South Node

The quest to find a dominant sign emphasis in my father-line was a failure. However, when I did a quick index of synastric contacts between each generation, a very clear pattern emerged. Each father delivered Pluto energy to some foundational planet in his child’s natal chart.

John I: Pluto, Uranus, and Saturn conjunct his son’s Moon

John II: Pluto and Neptune conjunct his son’s Sun

John III: Pluto square his son’s Sun

John IV: Pluto conjunct his daughter’s Saturn

Thea: No hard aspects from Pluto to her son’s chart

Since this data feels so personal to me, it’s emotional to talk about. My intuitive read of the heavy Plutonian fathers is that they devoured their children. I’ve made John I a kind of ancestral hero of the line, but the violent and volatile conjunction to his son’s Moon looks absolutely crushing. John I abandoned Tennessee, the home of his father, to settle in another state. John II took off to the midwest following his Southern upbringing. Furthermore, John II is not buried by any other family members. John III led an itinerant lifestyle as a preacher, and my Dad, John IV, never stayed in one place very long either. None of them followed in each other’s footsteps as far as career. John I was a trainman, and his son John II became a commercial chemist. John III preached the gospel, and John IV worked in insurance. I’m hard-pressed to see any ancestral inheritance from these men in myself except perhaps from my grandfather, the man of spirit whom I was never allowed to meet.

Though I incorporate Pluto into my business name, it’s not exactly an easy energy. Pluto is the signature of mass destruction, oppression, and misuse of power. It’s the planet of transformation and of endings that are as bitter and final as actual death. Some of John IV’s other sons became trainmen like their Dad, but John III didn’t. Some of my Dad’s brothers followed the Lord like their father, while my Dad rejected religion. There is a clear pattern in my paternal line of fathers who destroy their children, and of children who reject their fathers and what they stand for.

Though I don’t share many synastric contacts with my father, I really feel this heavy lineage. The image that leaps to mind is Goya’s Saturn Devouring his Son. My father crushed me. He was my sexual abuser, a legacy that utterly destroyed my perception of reality growing up. My conscious experience of him raping me is that he was trying to kill me, because I had no other context for what was happening. I was about 3 or 4 years old. I was not able to contain the cognitive dissonance that I was also dependent on this person who had tried to murder me (my perception), and so I blocked out the memory of the abuse for decades. But I was an extremely angry, hateful child; I remember, at four, feeling intense derision for the world around me. I thought everyone was “fake” because the idea of family was obviously a lie, no one loves you or takes care of you and you’re alone on this earth. I thought my own family was awful, and I had fantasies that I was adopted and would find my right family one day.

Though I blocked out the memory of the sexual abuse growing up, I remained consciously aware that my father was physically violent and unstable. He barely spoke to us, and when he did communicate, it was usually a bellowing cry in the midst of a four-alarm altercation at the house. He had untreated PTSD. We never knew the source of his mysterious triggers, but all of a sudden a quiet breakfast could turn into a terrifying scene with him turning over the table and going apeshit. He wasn’t having combat flashbacks. It was his own violent upbringing that he was reliving.

By the time I was a teenager, I had dreams of violently murdering my father, almost every night. This is a hard thing to explain, but I was proud of the time I punched him back, right in the nose. He called the cops on me (my family was fond of calling the cops). I learned later that he had never stood up to his own father’s physical abuse. Not only did I stand up to him, and reject his behavior, I worked hard over my life not to repeat it.

Part of the reason I named my business “The Pluto Babe” is because I have had to contend with a greater-than-normal share of these primal emotions and transgressive behaviors, unfolding in myself and in those around me. My inability to discuss what for me was so often just “normal life” without being shamed by the silence or horror of my auditors, led to me wanting to create a safe space for other survivors of grueling experiences that fall outside what we consider to be normal and acceptable. It’s so easy to blame the victim - so often we recoil against someone’s tales of violent and crazy family members, assuming that they must be tarred with that brush themselves. We fear that the drama is catching, and want to disassociate from the person with the unbearably intense experiences as soon as possible. But among Pluto’s positive qualities is the ability to witness the shadow without flinching, and this is something for which I have a particular talent. I certainly don’t worship violence or the misuse of power; my own work with Pluto falls along the lines of shadow healing and integration.

My father’s Pluto conjunct my natal Saturn in Leo is less intense than the Pluto contacts of his forefathers to their children. I wonder if I got off easy, or if my father’s heavy shadow material, his acting out the crazy in theatrical stunts, Leo style, was handed to me as a sort of karmic responsibility - Saturn. I was crushed, but I didn’t die. However, I have had to dedicate the majority of my life energy in this incarnation to healing depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. It’s a daily practice and a lifetime commitment.

Obviously, my father failed me in a lot of ways, but I’ll zero in on the Pluto in Leo to my Saturn in Leo aspect, because it’s a degree point that recurs rather conspicuously in my direct father-line. My father swallowed my voice: his natal Pluto falls in my third house of speaking and communication. I remember, as a child, proudly giving him some clay sculptures I had made, thinking he could use them to decorate his office. The same day he handed them back to me all mushed up in a bag, saying he wouldn’t need them. I was devastated, and this scenario, of my father coldly rejecting my creativity and self-expression, repeated over my young life. It’s been a long fight to reclaim it. I was so shy in middle school that for a time, the people at my new school believed I was retarded. I was mute. I couldn’t get the words out. I constantly marvel that my current job as an astrologer involves giving lengthy monologues. It’s a great illustration of the long game of Saturn, planetary archetype of hard work, development, and overcoming limitation.

If you think it’s weird that an abused child would make her father gifts or pine for his attention, then you just don’t know kids. Sure, I wanted to please him so he would be less angry and scary, I have no doubt that that was part of my motivation. But I also desperately wanted to be adored, Leo style. I wanted my father to think I was as exciting and spectacular as I believed I was. But his narcissistic self-involvement made it clear that he was the child who deserved all the attention, and he was not above throwing tantrums, toddler style, to demand that attention. It was so normal for people in my house to smash things when they got mad that it took me years to realize there were other ways to express anger.

I once got into a fight with a hypnotist I was consulting because I told him that I wanted to “find my missing anger” in our session. Why didn’t I have a big upwelling of rage against my father? What had happened to it? Though the hypnotist could definitely have been nicer about it, he insisted that I might not have experienced anger about the sexual abuse when it happened. That option might not have been on my coping skills menu as a kid. I clearly dissociated from the memories so that I wouldn’t have to feel whatever they implied. I later grew up to be furious with my Dad about lots of other things, but not about the thing that I couldn’t bear to remember. I was so shocked and upset about the hypnotist’s take that I declined to work with him. But later it dawned on me that young brains make all kinds of bizarre bargains to contain the unthinkable. Adult me can be enraged over what my father did to me, but young me made excuses and allowances for the abuse.

Check out the repeating energy around 9 degrees of Leo in the paternal lineage:

John I: 9 Leo North Node

John II: 18 Leo Saturn

John III: 4 Leo Neptune, 9 Leo Saturn

John IV: 9 Leo Pluto

Thea: 11 Leo Saturn

My kid: 13 Leo Jupiter

As astrologer Rick Levine has pointed out, we often see Saturn signs recur in family charts, since the Saturn return (around age 29) is a popular time to have a baby. My grandfather and his father both have Saturn in Leo like me. I’m fascinated by the fact that my great-great-grandfather, John Turner Finley, had the North Node in Leo at this same sensitive point, exactly conjunct my father’s Pluto. Though ancestry often enters into my work as an Evolutionary Astrologer, I don’t typically think of the North Node as a window into family destiny. The North Node is a point that shows the individual’s karmic potential, so why does this 9 Leo energy show up in such a heavy way in John Turner Finley’s descendants?

These mysteries are largely beyond me, but I wonder if John Turner Finley’s own narcissistic self-involvement, Leo style, was also a kind of “family destiny.” John II and John III certainly bore the weight and responsibility for it with their Leo Saturns. Or perhaps they just sustained it - also Saturn. My father’s 9 Leo Pluto has an Orestes-like quality to it, the descendant in the tortured house of Atreus who was driven mad by the Furies. And then there’s me, Saturn again, doomed to live out the family karma, but also, perhaps, gifted with enough moral backbone to not indulge the Leo narcissistic wound.

But are we ever really free? Maybe some traits just run in families. Maybe if I could see the natal charts of my kid’s kids and their kids, I’d see these same astrological tendencies recur, hopefully in less challenged positions. My kid’s natal Jupiter in Leo certainly shows a sunnier potential of the sign. Maybe my Dad just handled the Leo energy poorly and lived out its shadow face (Pluto). Maybe we’re back to the old astrological adage that there are no bad charts, just bad responses to planetary stimuli.

I did what can only be described as a fuck-ton of ritual while pregnant, in an attempt to steer my bad ancestors away from my child’s karma. I prayed for him to be free. I was gratified to see that my own Pluto is not really involved with my son’s chart at all. It worked! I broke the cycle. But then that annoying intuitive voice (really, sometimes I wish I could muzzle it!) told me to compare my kid’s chart to my husband’s. My husband’s natal Pluto is sitting right on my kid’s Virgo Sun. So my son matches the paternal lineage trait of receiving massive Pluto energy from the father.

In some ways, a Pluto contact to another person’s Sun is like confronting all your own worst tendencies and unhealed wounds when you interact with the other. And in not insignificant ways, this is also a pretty good definition of the experience of parenting. Our children make us hyper-aware of where we were not nurtured, or where we received less-than-ideal care. There are greater and lesser responses to this constant psychological pressure. And I’m happy to say that in my house, we have a good dialogue around where the triggers are happening and how best to handle them.

If you’ve read this far, thanks! I’m interested in exploring lineage charts besides my own to gain a more holistic sense of how astrological patterns repeat in families. So please, hit me up if you’re game for a beta ancestry reading. I’ve learned from this exploration of my own astro DNA that my way of being on this Earth, my intensity and Plutonian depths, is literally “in my blood” or part of a lineage pattern. I pray to rise to its highest potential.