Astrology and Horoscopes
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The Shadow

The Self

A combination of psyche and ego (ego being the conscious realm as signified by the ascendant), the psyche being the conscious and unconscious. We are born into the cross of matter and fixated, at the time of birth, in an ego building chart, with 12 other environmental, housing concerns that respond to our involuntariness and spend time trying to sway us into a formation.

The ego is needed to respond and NOT to react, hopefully spontaneously, as a child (so says the Bible) so as not to form too many sub personalities. Let s give your SELF the number 1 personality that is free flowing and typical of your ascendant, depending on its mutability, cardinality or fixity. The number 2 personality has been CONDITIONED by the chart/12 houses and all aspects to the ascendant and shows the nature of the ego from birth forward.

Look at your chart and see what your ascendant and all planets nearby have to say about your ego/self and watch closely as to your approach to the unconscious and the imaginable realm. Do you move about freely? Does your ego set discerning pathways by which you can maneuver through your chart?, and by the way, the charts of others? Remember when we read the charts of others that we are speaking to the SOUL through the ego…and sometimes it is a treacherous path if we are too subjectively involved with our own egos!

The Anima

The Anima is the SOUL of man and is seen through the female side (which can be male or female) I associate the Soul connection in relationships through the Moon/Venus and all heavily aspect connections of the male s chart through those two directions.

The anima in a man s chart is his inner female and can be reflected back to him more easily when there is a Moon/Venus connection through another s chart.

This is critical, especially in love relationships as the female in the relationship will be relating to the male s anima whether she likes it or not, as that is all he can see/love her for.

So let s look closely at the male Moon/Venus in the men s charts, and look closely at how they aspect your chart in synastry.

I will take my relationship to Guy as an example and hopefully will keep it simple. I have Venus 29/50 Cancer, Moon at 15 Libra…His Sun is trine my Venus and his Neptune (another minor anima planet) is conjunct my Moon. So eventhough we may do the dance of fuss/fight and play about the cosmos with one another, we have a basic anima connection which helps us stay in communication and in relationship. So that speaks to his anima. This is not to say that I am the ONLY anima figure in his life, as there are many, but it shows an easier time of the connection. The fuss/fight has to do with my Mars in opposition to his very vulnerable Moon in the 7th house as well as my Saturn squaring his Moon so that shows some of the more negative aspects of my connection to his Anima figures.

Try to set up this combination and look at the synastry of just those two connections with you and the men in your life, or you as a man, to see what you might see. Of course we could get more complicated, but for now, just look at that connection of the Anima.

The Animus

The Animus, on the other hand, is the SPIRIT connection of the female to the male as she carries around her male projections and then blends them into her persona to connect to her own inner male, forming ultimately, as does the man with his anima, the INNER MARRIAGE or the Conunction. This is soo very important because of the nature of our projections, to get control and ownership of our projections, making life a bit easier.

The Animus in a female is represented by her Sun/Mars and often Pluto.

My image of men in my life is strongly colored by these three factors, however, I will stay only with Sun and Mars and look at those aspects. With me, the Sun is conjunct my ascendant in Leo which pulls in two players (Sun/Ascendant). Mars is conjunct my north node and Mercury in the angular 1st house, in early Virgo, so you can see what I have projected as the image of the PERFECT ANIMUS. To put a negative slant on this, all the Virgo planets are squared by the elevated tenth house Saturn/Uranus conjunction in Gemini. I demand a male to fit the mutability and also the stature of these combinations, and if they don t fit, I simply don t have the male in my intimate life, but he is the guiding INNER FACTOR..as he is my INNER MALE…he must be strong, god-like, athletic, mercurial,hermetic, analytical, organized, ready to take chances at the drop of a hat, and highly communicative as well as inquisitive, not to mention his intelligence should reign supreme. I have gone through the qualities, in short of my Sun/Mars mixture as that is the FIRST look at the Animus.

So let s take dear Guy as my Animus figure, looking outside of myself. His Saturn, Mars, Ascendant is on my Sun/Ascendant, which creates a powerful magnetism of energy as we project out to others…it doesn t always work in magnetizing us into a togetherness..as we need the format of a stage…and what a production!!!..Guy s Moon is opposing my Virgo stellium, so there will be some very sensitive issues here that work there way about the opposition, however Mercuries are sextile so that helps in the communications.

Now for the women to look at how they set up their Animus figures in their own charts, and pay close attention to the aspects to Sun/Mars.

The Shadow

The Shadow is all that peripheral material that we don t like to look at, but keep in our closet for safe keeping (in the personality) We have conscious and unconscious shadow figures moving about most often seen in the oppositions to Sun/Moon and placed strongly in the 7th house. Again we are keeping it simple so as not to get encumbered by too much rational analysis and circumventing the main issues in our lives.

Shadows are worked through, in part, through the negative projections onto others, especially our own sex. We must notice the attention we pay, and those that grab our energies and see what part of them lies within us.

I will use my own Sun and Moon analysis as well as my 7th house, whose co-rulers (Saturn/Uranus) lie in the 10th house. I am mesmerized by strong willed and connected females more in a positive way, and have spent much of my life devoted to hanging onto those images AS self, but the shadow part of me is equally put off and negatively hypnotized by the VICTIM, the HELPLESS, and the NEEDY female opposite. So I had to take the nature of the Sun in Leo and find out what the oppositions to those adjectives/qualities would be, not Uranus. I have acted out my willful freedom issues by walking out of 7th house relationships, not facing my own dependency, my own neediness, fears, helplessness..and most of all my own sadness. To this day, it creates an intense amount of work on my shadow side. My eighth house opposing Moon in Libra (second) is of course how Aphrodite will live with her sexuality…as I watch her shadow nymphlike creatures going about creating magic.

So now I would like for you to focus on your own Sun/Moon and 7th house and look at just those shadows, to see what you can see.

Gwynne Mayer

Last updated on November 13, 2015 at 7:15 pm. Word Count: 1323