At birth you enter the Octave of Childhood, which extends to the age of about seven years old, during which time you create and adapt the personality which registered at birth. Because influences during child-hood are received through the medium of the family, it is necessary to Table 8: ASC/Planet Interpretation
Aspect PersonificationsInfluences
Sun/ASC Father, men, doctor, grandfather. Relationships to men, recognition, popularity, personal attitudes to others, self-confidence, physical rela-tions, the public, masculinity
Moon/ASC Mother, grandmother, midwife, nurse, women. Personal feelings about others, feminine influence, maternity, protection, breast feed-ing, sensitivity, receptivity, adaptability (alkaloids, induction, anaes-thetics, drugs, watery birth)
Mercury/ASC Friends, talkers, nurses, young children, gossips. Thoughts at birth, definition, talking, changing views, ideas, criticism, (sense stimuli, nerves)
Venus/ASC Women, sisters, nurses, girls, attractive people, lovers, midwife.
Harmonious personality, loving atmosphere, art, adornment, beauti-ful surroundings, easy birth, pleasure, even tempered (good complex-ion, general appearance, proportions)
Mars/ASC Surgeon, doctor, midwife, men, fighters, aggressors, male children.
Fighting, teamwork, forceful success, physical strength, restlessness, decision (surgery, force, circumcision, violence, episiotomy, forceps, facial scar, accidents, Caesareans, birth apparatus)
Jupiter/ASC Doctor, midwife, uncle, aunt, grandparents, team, positivists, priests Easy birth, pleasant experiences, agreeable manner, compromise, generosity, correct acts, successful operations (large baby, jaundice, difficult breast feeding)
Saturn/ASC Doctor, hospital staff, grandparents, serious people, inhibitors, lonely people. Isolation, restriction, inhibition, seriousness, experience, hin-drance, depression, seclusion, (separation, isolation, long labour, birth apparatus, skin trouble, blockages, tension, amputation, sensory disfunction, facial mark, premature birth, stillbirth, lack of attention) Uranus/ASC Excitable people, innovators, originals, technicians, orderlies.
Excitement, originality, scientific birth, movement, rhythmic, inci-dents, disquiet, sudden events, unexpected circumstances (quick birth, short labour induction, machines, monitors, headaches, for-ceps, accidents, sensitive skin, responsive nervous system, circumci-sion)
Neptune/ASCAnaesthetists, nurses, psychics, sensitives, druggists, mediums Impressionable, sensitive, insecure, peculiar contacts, disillusionment, sympathetic, exploitation, (inducement, anaesthetics, alcohol, drugs, peculiar birth, dreaming, water birth, sensory deception, malforma-tions, incubators)
Pluto/ASC Doctors, staff, powerful people, authorities, fascinating people, those in control. Fascinating personality, ambition, psychic forces, unusual influences, readjustment, dramatic changes, radical alterations (force,
you are physically created, in childhood mother is more a protector and guide to personality development. Immediately after birth, you cannot differentiate yourself from your mother because of necessary and nat-ural survival instincts; you are bonded to her. Only gradually do you begin to separate from her and her influence. By the end of childhood you have distinguished yourself from her and from other women, but early on she can be interchangeable with nannies, grandmothers, aunts, surrogate mothers and even older sisters.
Mercury during childhood is communication, as even in the womb you receive and evaluate sounds and words. The primary manifestation of Mercury is other children and the effect they have on you, unless Mercury is in aspect to either the Sun or Moon, when the main com-munication is with one of your parents. Mercury indicates children at home, while aspects from Mercury to planets in childhood are children outside your immediate family. Other planets aspecting Mercury qual-ify its personifications. For example, when Mercury and Saturn are in aspect to a planet in childhood, the communication may come from a talkative grandparent.
Venus during childhood represents adaptation to or relationship with young women or children who affect your love or aesthetic sense. In aspect to the Moon, Venus can be the aesthetic quality of your moth-er. Venus is people and objects you accept readily and to whom you are willing to accommodate yourself. Drawing, painting, music, taste in clothes and the general look of your family’s world either clashes with (for square or opposition aspects) or supports your outlook.
Mars during childhood is the desire to go beyond parents or to react against your family. Mars is active, wilful and can be destructive, yet mobile and intense, as its function is to activate and break up static sit-uations in order that creativity may issue from them. Mars also governs accidents and feverish childhood diseases caused by or restricting active mobility.
Jupiter during childhood denotes expansion or support from family friends or those outside the family, and religious attitudes prevalent at home. Generosity and optimism keynote the events and people described by Jupiter and transmitted by them.
Saturn during childhood shows restrictions defining and limiting your development. It is the tendency to isolate yourself, withdraw and con-centrate upon your own way, and is carried by those whom you observe doing this themselves. The influences are serious, concentrat-ed, pessimistic or negative and may derive from financial situations and locale as well as individuals. The family doctor is often indicated here.
Uranus during childhoodis eccentric, unusual, disruptive or independent tendencies which do not conform to your family’s rules or perspec-understand your childhood home and relationship to your family in
order to understand the nature of your personality. These houses are below the horizon in the horoscope, so their influences are subjective, unconscious and accountable to influences beyond your immediate control.
Your personality develops against the already existing structure of your parents’ relationship to each other and to others within your fam-ily. Your own development during childhood is rapid compared to the more static framework of your family. You must continually contrast your instinctive grasp of relationships to the attitudes your parents project onto you as rules of behaviour. This interchange creates a value system by which you live your life.
Planets in childhood and their aspects from the other two octaves represent people around you and those upon whom you base your per-sonality. They are models of behaviour to be accepted, rejected, excluded or integrated. Since most childhood influences are carried by those within and accessible to your family circle, your attitudes are highly conditioned by the prevailing familial reality. You may or may not be free to adopt your own opinions and ways of behaviour; this depends upon what is acceptable to your family. One of your primary tasks during this time is to understand what the family is and what its attitudes are.
Freud believed that a child recapitulates the development of all mankind during childhood. The four houses of childhood describe a collective development (we all must enact it), which is also individual-ly unique. The earindividual-ly developments of mankind are mythological, and childhood events carry a mythological and fantastic atmosphere – even your parents’ stories play their part in defining your personality.
The Sun during childhood is the vital relationship to your father. His influence during gestation is indirect, but during childhood you gradu-ally realize his relative importance within the family. This is often because most fathers have little direct contact until their children begin to speak or even later. When the Sun registers at this time your father exerts a strong influence upon your personality. Due to natural contact with grandfathers and uncles during childhood, there is a likelihood that they also participate in the solar qualities. Aspects from the Sun to planets in childhood show indirect paternal qualities. As in Horoscope 15, the father is missing at birth, but later in childhood, at one year old, the Moon and Mars are square to the Sun indicating a permanent sep-aration.
The Moon during childhoodis your early feelings about your mother and feminine continuity from gestation, where it was of primary signifi-cance. As in gestation maternal qualities are the medium within which
hours after birth interrupts the natural bonding of child and mother.
The effects of a generation of these practices upon the western world shows in the widespread violence and alienation in world youth.
The women’s movement has been responsible for the recognition and alteration of these unnatural practices, and a return to natural childbirth practices is well under way. The education of women during pregnancy, exercises to promote natural delivery without anaesthetics, support from other women, monitoring by midwives instead of doc-tors, delivery at home in positive surroundings and conditions, close physical connections with the mother even before the umbilical cord is naturally severed, and an encouragement of breastfeeding are all inte-gral to public knowledge. In fact, the return to natural birthing prac-tices is called ‘alternative’ birth!
The manner of antenatal treatment is often indicated in the horo-scope. A square or opposition from or to the Moon is separation from mother. Saturn near or in aspect to the ASC is separation, inhibition or restraint caused by a doctor or others. Mars is brutality or aggressive treatment, surgery or rough handling, as well as force in delivery itself.
Uranus shows technology, erratic behaviour, accidents, abrupt transi-tion, changes in rhythm or the unexpected. Neptune is drug treatment, the use of and response to anaesthetics, induction, substances admin-istered through breast milk or bottle, or gasses. Pluto is a threat to life, alteration caused by other children or influences from the hospital or the outside world. The Node is adaptation to the family in addition to the mother’s exclusive control. Jupiter governs dietary matters and gen-eral hygiene.
The first five degrees are influences related to the post-natal period of one month. The remaining degrees of the 1st House describe bonding to those who tend you, those with whom you have close per-sonal contact, and those who represent extensions of your perper-sonality.
The archetypal Aries qualities of this house create a world as a contigu-ous whole surrounding your centre, an attitude which those with Aries Sun or Moon retain forever. The variety of people present during the 1st House time determines the multiplicity of assertive subpersonali-ties, as distinct from your personality itself. The primary criteria are that your appetites are gratified, your nappies dry and your demands for attention met. At this stage positive influences cannot be differen-tiated from negative influences as they are all integrated into your world.
The elements of the signs in the 1st House define your assertive direction. Fire requires energy from others;. Earth, physical contact;
Air, verbal and audial response; and Water requires emotional feed-back. Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable modes of the elements determine tives. Restless, highly strung, erratic and rhythmic influences
predomi-nate as vehicles for Uranus’ pattern-breaking effects.
Neptune during childhood is sensitivity, receptivity and psychic links in feelings of your family and others. Fantasies, imaginary friends, toys or animals which generate their own identities, dreams, and the world of make-believe are defined by Neptune. Often Neptune is not equivalent to a real person or animal, but is accumulated among many imaginary figures or counterparts of family members. The connection to these fancies is exaggerated during illness or times of weakness.
Pluto during childhoodis association with and relation to the public out-side your family, often conveyed by propaganda in the media. Contact with news and famous individuals through television exposes you to accepted opinion and the rules of the world at large. Pluto also carries prevailing attitudes towards child-raising, from popular viewpoints to rejection as shown by violence and abuse.
The Node during childhoodis the ability to adapt to your family and asso-ciated relatives, neighbours and friends as an overall unit.
A predominance of planets in this octave indicates that the ability to create your personality within the family situation is central to and a governing factor in the formation of your world view.
The 1st House (naturally Aries) Birth until seven months old
In the first seven months after birth you are totally reliant upon your mother for food and support, and she becomes an extension of your will. The demands you make upon her are instinctive and require immediate gratification, and she responds instinctively to meet your demands. The quality of this interchange is defined by the sign or signs occupying the first house. Fire signs show immediate assertion; Earth signs are physical links; Air signs are communications; and Water signs are emotional attachments. As each house is usually intersected by more than one sign (and element), the mother/child relationship goes through a change at some point amidst this house.
For many decades it was standard practice to separate newborn chil-dren from their mothers directly after delivery. The detached and bru-tal practices include being handled by rubber gloved hands, being pow-dered with various chemicals, held upside down and spanked, circum-cised, umbilical cords cut before natural separation time, being wrapped in sterile tight sheets, incubated, and many others. All these practices were considered the standard and thought to be essential to antenatal health. It is now clear that most of these practices are as harmful as they are unnecessary. The traumatic act of separation for
ways. These extensions in movement amplify your range of influence and the variety of experiences you encounter. As language is primarily imitative, it is critical to identify who influenced you at this time, how you learned to communicate and what influences were transmitted to you. Your world is unbound from the obsession with objects of the 2nd House and directed to people, primarily children like brothers and sisters.
Planets in the 3rd House show the nature of communication as sym-bolized by people within your home and family. Luminaries show par-ents as primary models of communication. Mercury, Venus and Mars are almost always other children with whom you identify or spend time. Jupiter and Saturn represent aunts, uncles, grandparents, house-keepers or nannies who either expand or limit self-expression.
Although Jupiter and Saturn are usually identifiable as specific people, sometimes Jupiter is the expansive side of all relatives and Saturn the limiting side of them, or they may symbolize the expansive and limit-ing parental sides of your family structure. Uranus and Pluto show dominant changes in your environment coming from the world, as through the media, or from the inside. Neptune is sensitivity or inse-curity about movement, change and communication. The Node shows collective values where no individual is a primary model, but rather the whole family or group.
As there is a powerful fantasy element during this time, most of your family carry prominent inner images within you sometimes related to, but often a distortion of, an objective reality. Nicknames, family jokes and special characteristics imagined or real fall into this category. The more planets in this house, the more complex and potentially dualistic your communication, as there are more models with whom you con-nect. Sometimes imaginary figures seem real, just as real people seem obscure. Planets in the 3rd House with aspects to or from many plan-ets outside the house indicate that most models are from outside the immediate family system, or that the family transmits ways of behav-iour deriving from the world outside.
The Gemini archetype of the twins doubles personifications in this house. The Sun produces double father images literally or as the work-ing father vs. the homebody father, while Jupiter produces doubled sets of grandparents.
An absence of planets in the 3rd House indicates a lack of specific models for communication, which can result from being an only child.
As usual, the signs occupying the house determine the type of adapta-tion and diversity of communicative power. Fire signs communicate intuitively through energy exchange; Earth signs with physical means like drawing, building, toy manipulation or touch; the natural Air signs whether your environment is initiatory, stable or changeable. Having a
fixed water sign Scorpio in the 1st House shows a child who requires stable emotional attachment against which to assert its personality.
Gemini would require a continually changing, highly communicative atmosphere, reflecting its mutable air qualities. The signs in this house show the kind of environment within which you assert yourself.
Planets in residence and their aspects combine with or undermine the element and sign in the house and determine whether or not the pre-vailing atmosphere is supportive or obstructive. The 1st House shows those individuals who were essential in your earliest home environment and how you adapted to them.
The 2nd House (naturally Taurus) Seven months until one year and eight months old
The 2nd House is your emergence into the physical world as a sepa-rate object among other objects. Generally, you are weaned from moth-er’s milk and begin eating solid food at about this time. You contact the physical world and learn to utilize natural resources including objects, sounds, people and behaviour. Your level of access determines your later attitudes towards material and the physical world.
Planets in the 2nd House show people and influences which deter-mine and qualify your physical reality. The Sun or Moon indicate that parents are primarily identified as being object-like, or that they are the bearers or custodians of objects. Venus is accommodation to the phys-ical world and Mars is the desire to change it. Mercury is thought about objects or their use in communication; Jupiter is the will to obtain more; and Saturn is a limitation with their presence. Often planets here symbolize family members and reflect a tendency to adopt or resist physicality depending upon prevailing family attitudes and circum-stances, like the improvement or disintegration of your father’s busi-ness and material attitudes.
The signs in this house define your attitude towards material matters and your body. Earth signs are natural here; Air signs reflect the phys-ical world as an abstract idea, as words or as the material for commu-nication; Fire signs use the physical world as the background for self-expression; and Water signs relate to their feelings about things.
Emotions concentrated upon parents are similar to feelings about objects, such as an obsession with teddy bears, rugs, blankets and thumbs. The object is the only respite from a threatening world.
The 3rd House (naturally Gemini)
One year and eight months until three years and six months old
In the 3rd House you learn to walk, talk and communicate in other
only one or few planets in this house, but many aspects from planets elsewhere, you seek family organization and its equivalent feelings from outside sources.
Fire signs in the 4th House are active, individualistic and intuitive atti-tude towards family and home; Earth signs value physical security and visual contact; with Air signs the spoken parental views count more heavily than the reality; while for the natural Water signs the feeling of
Fire signs in the 4th House are active, individualistic and intuitive atti-tude towards family and home; Earth signs value physical security and visual contact; with Air signs the spoken parental views count more heavily than the reality; while for the natural Water signs the feeling of