Part II of III

Last week I posted a blog about how to use a natal chart to reconstruct the character of an ancestor whose birthday you know, to demonstrate how astrology can be used to support ancestor work. By far the more common approach to incorporating astrology in ancestor work, however, is to take a collective of charts and determine a dominant sign, aspect, or other astrological signature of that family grouping. For example, I was raised in a family where three out of four of us were Virgos. You probably never saw a house so stuffed with craft supplies and other hobbyist paraphernalia as my childhood home! I’m a Virgo, my son is a Virgo, and my husband has Pluto, Jupiter, and the South Node in Virgo. So my current home likewise overflows with precision tools for tinkering. I haven’t done any in-depth analysis of my nuclear family’s collective of charts, but it’s obvious we all rhyme with “Virgo.”

But what about ancestral lines? Will we see the same types of obvious groupings of signs? The answer is yes and no, as you might expect. Erin Sullivan’s dense tome, The Astrology of Family Dynamics, lays out numerous examples, from families who carbon-copy complex aspect patterns with startling regularity, to families whose individual members don’t appear to have any astrological placements in common.

My great-grandmother Frances, pictured with the locket she’s wearing in the photo

The first challenge I encountered while learning this technique was around how generous astrologers are when assessing patterns across families. Maybe Dad has a Neptune sextile to the Sun, and Mom has a trine to the same planet. Kid #1 is a Pisces and Kid #2 has Jupiter conjunct Neptune. From what I’ve gathered speaking to astrologers who work with family charts, this would be considered a strong Neptunian theme in a family. So presumably the family has a karmic contract to experience Neptune things together, whether that’s Christianity, surfing, painting, over-idealization of one another, or alcoholism (to name but a few examples!).

I find this technique frustrating because it sort of implies that everyone is getting the same experience from the nuclear family. In reality, however, maybe two sisters in a family get along like a house on fire while a third sister never fits in, never needs to, and disappears from the family system the second she turns 18. Maybe the son who constantly butts heads with his Mom finds solace with his estranged aunt. And let’s not forget all the Capricorn-Aquarius folks who are often content to lead more solitary lives.

Families come in various shapes and sizes and can be quite fluid. The astrology of family patterns feels prescriptive, like there’s a “should” attached to it: we should all love each other equally, even if two family members have an obvious affinity that is not shared by the other family members. What has come to be more useful to me is the idea of “astro DNA,” or looking at the charts of descendants to understand what they inherited from their parents. It is most typical to see a little “DNA,” or astro signature, inherited from both parents. Let’s say you get your Leo emphasis from Dad and your Cancer emphasis from Mom, in addition to a welter of other traits inherited from ancestors farther back. (This is how DNA works, right? I’m trusting my memory of 7th grade science class to carry me through here). In all seriousness, recent genetic findings suggest that it is, in fact, possible, to receive more DNA from one parent than another, and when it comes to grandparents and more distant ancestors, it’s really a roll of the dice. So you will often see kids who favor one parent more than the other astrologically, just as we see with the uneven distribution of physical characteristics and personality traits across families.

And, of course, we’ve all met those oddballs who don’t appear to resemble either parent, and seem destined to found a new lineage (with or without children) that represents a fundamental break with the past. I believe we can identify these astrological “changelings” in chart natives who share few to no astrological signatures with their parents or grandparents.

It’s not too hard to test out this technique for yourself if you’re a novice astrologer. The internet abounds with free sites for drawing birth charts, and you have most of the data you’ll need even if you only know your parents’ birth place and date (run a noon chart if you don’t know the birth time). Even if you only know one parent’s birth info, you can run that chart to see how it compares with yours.

It was wild to find my grandmother’s notes on Dane Rudhyar’s Sabian symbols in the box of family photos I rifled through for this blog. I highlighted the note for the degree of my nadir - 24 Leo.

I find that this technique yields quite fascinating and nuanced information. You’ll want to limit your inclusion of signs to the seven visible “planets” (the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn), because the outer planets proceed through the signs much more slowly, and so won’t yield as much information about the chart native’s personal life.

I favor my Mom more than my Dad in temperament, personality, and lifestyle. We’re both Virgos with four planets in Libra. Enough said! When I look at my Dad’s chart, I don’t see that we have any sign commonality among the seven traditional planets. However, he has the Sun opposing Neptune. I have the Sun square Neptune. That feels like a precise piece of DNA that’s been handed down, the solar ego-nature in hard aspect to the planet of dissipation, spirituality, and victimization. It’s definitely not as simplistic as I’m about to describe it, but in some ways it feels as if I inherited my Mom’s personality and my Dad’s pain.

When I was 19, my Virgo Mom, Virgo brother, and Virgo me set out on a trip to Sedona to regroup as a family of three after my Dad moved out and filed for divorce. I had heard about Sedona from my astrology teacher, and was eager to experience those New Age vortex vibes. The evening we arrived, our waitress at Pizza Hut (this is a true story) gave the table a spontaneous psychic reading. She said that the three of us had traveled many lifetimes together, and that my father’s spirit was only a passing visitor to our karma. She further claimed that my father had always felt left out of our natural affinity, and our Virgo crafternoons. I mean, I’m sure family karma is more complicated than that, but I’m still amazed that a complete stranger was able to diagnose the family dynamic without knowing that the Three Virgo Musketeers fall into an uncomfy inconjunct with my father’s Aries Sun.

Sibling chart comparison

The power of the astro DNA analysis was really brought home to me when studying my grandmother Beatrice’s chart. As I mentioned in my previous blog about astrology and ancestry, my grandmother has the Sun conjunct Mars in Scorpio. Her mother also has the Sun conjunct Mars in Scorpio. And, to make things super trippy, my grandmother’s grandmother has the Sun conjunct Mars in the Mars-ruled sign of Aries. This is obviously a case of some very scrappy, self-willed women perpetuating themselves in their daughter’s DNA, in the not altogether common aspect of Mars conjunct the Sun.

But here’s where things get interesting! My grandmother had a sister, one who was much more mellow and sweet than my grandmother. My great aunt Ora was a Scorpio, like her Mom, but that’s where the chart similarities end. Ora’s natal Mars is in people-pleasing Libra. Ora also has the Sun trine Neptune, a placement which shows easy harmony between ego identification and spiritual gnosis. This is an aspect she shares with her father and his mother. Ora was always the favorite child of her father, and expressed a wish to be buried next to him.

So to paraphrase all that, because I know it gets repetitive and confusing:

My Marsy grandmother Beatrice inherited her battle-ready demeanor from her Czech mother and maternal grandmother. My Neptunian great aunt Ora, conversely, inherited her mystic sensibility from her German father and paternal grandmother. In other words, the results of the astro DNA analysis are tantamount to concluding that one sibling got Mom’s athletic ability while the other got Dad’s musical ability.

My Czech great-grandmother Frances and my German great-grandfather Otto, parents of Beatrice and Ora

What I like about the astro DNA technique over the astrology of family patterns is that it allows us to track inheritance across generations without assuming that every family is going to fall into some natural affinity or cohesive unit. For example, my grandmother was always jealous of her sister Ora because she was the favorite child, and the more glamorous and likable one to boot. This certainly sounds like the too-ready resentment of the Mars-Sun person for the Sun-Neptune person’s popularity! My grandmother Beatrice was abandoned by her mother after her father’s suicide, while her sister Ora was allowed to stay with Mom. Here we see the astrological truism at work, that character determines fate. My great-grandmother kept the sympathetic Neptunian child with her during a time of crisis, but farmed the troublesome Mars child out to distant relatives. We’re able to gauge “inheritance,” though not necessarily harmony, between my Mars-Sun grandmother and her Mars-Sun Mom through analyzing the astro DNA.

A “Pluto Babe” lineage?

To sum up: the astro DNA technique, or analyzing the birth chart of children against the birth charts of the parents to look for patterns of inheritance, can point us toward the ancestors with whom we share the most psychic DNA. While I would certainly like to claim the inheritance of my mystical-minded great-grandfather and his kitchen-witch German mother, I have to admit that my own natal chart leans more toward the hardness of that Sun conjunct Mars lineage on my direct mother-line. In theory, I am the equal inheritor of both strands of astro DNA, my great-grandfather’s soft Neptunian qualities and his wife’s Marsy fighting spirit. But astrologically speaking, I’m more hard than soft, and have more of the snapping turtle quality of my maternal lineage, with my own natal Mars conjunct Mercury and Pluto. I’m also more consciously identified with being a scrappy survivor (hello Mars) than with being a behind-the-scenes Neptunian witch.

This doesn’t mean that I can’t tap into the spirituality of my great-grandfather and his mystical mother! In fact, I began my research on this part of the family after a medium told me that my witchy gifts flow from this German great-great-grandmother, whose first name is my middle name, and whose last name means “mead brewer.” I checked her chart - witchy Ceres in earth-centered Taurus conjunct Pluto, planet of sorcery. It all tracks!

We learn from folkloric beliefs about ancestral inheritance that grandparents often have more in common with their grandchildren than with their children. I’m using my own family to demonstrate this principle because I have access to so many charts, along with my lived experience of the chart natives. The heavy Scorpionic emphasis of my Grandmother Bea’s chart (and her mother Frances’s) seems to have dissipated in her Virgo/Libra children, who only have minor Scorpionic traits. But of Beatrice’s six grandchildren, two have the Sun conjunct Pluto (I find this startling). Another has Mars and Pluto conjunct in Scorpio. Yet another has Mars, Venus, and Uranus conjunct in Scorpio in the 8th house (conjunctions, much like the sign of Scorpio, amplify intensity). Then there’s me, the fifth cousin, who has Pluto and Mars involved in a tight stellium of four planets, which impacts me so much that I named my business for Scorpio’s ruler, Pluto. Only one cousin of the six has Scorpio’s two rulers, Mars and Pluto, in relatively bland positions in her natal chart.

Beatrice and her husband Arthur with two of their children

I think about this a lot (obviously, ha!) I wonder what piece of karma my Grandmother’s dramatically martial mother-line was handing down, and I wonder if my cousins and I are carrying it forward or cleaning it up. The prevalence of mental illness and other hard fates among us cause me to think it’s both. I also wonder if my grandmother’s incredible tenacity of spirit (Mars conjunct the Sun in Scorpio with less than a degree of orb!) is another reason that so many of her grandchildren reflect her chart’s themes.

While looking for photos to share on this blog, I synchronistically stumbled across my grandmother’s birth certificate complete with her BIRTH TIME! Confirmed: Grandma Bea was a total Pluto Babe, with Pluto crowning the chart at the MC. Adding to the drama, Pluto appears to be un-aspected except for a yod to Mercury and Uranus (yikes). The conspicuous placement of Pluto at a crucial angle gives some astrological support to the idea that she was the founder of a very Scorpionic lineage …

The messy truth is that astro DNA is distributed unequally, rarely falling into neat binaries as with my grandmother and her sister. In my estimation, I’m the second least Scorpionic cousin of the six on this line, though still plenty Plutonic. Of all the ancestors on my mother’s side, my natal chart most resembles my great-grandfather’s, the Neptunian mystic who took his own life when the burgeoning auto industry caused his harness business to fail. Like him, I’m a Virgo with Venus in Libra, conjunct his natal Venus within one degree. But my mother’s chart resembles his even more - she has the Sun in Virgo and the Moon in Pisces just like her grandfather, in the Full Moon opposition. I often wonder what it was like for my grandmother to meet the energy of the father whose suicide devastated her in the natal chart of her own daughter. These are mysteries that I’m as yet only able to describe, but not interpret, by analyzing the pattern of the astro DNA.

Many of my long-time followers are aware that I’m an Evolutionary Astrologer, and thus look to the natal chart to understand the karmic purpose of the individual’s ever-evolving Soul. Incorporating this idea into family charts and ancestral inheritance is something new for me, and I don’t claim to have it anywhere near cracked! However, I’m happy to take willing guinea pigs for beta readings - reach out if you have some lineage charts you want to explore, and we’ll take it from there. In my next blog about astrology and ancestry, I’ll explore what synastry (inter-chart aspects) can tell us about psychological inheritance.