Useful insights according to the different stages of life, outlined in this article:
- In childhood and pre-adolescence: identifying potential
- During adolescence: encouraging self-expression
- For adults: self-understanding and discernment of one’s past
- Deciding when to do what? Timing matters!
“Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”
Goethe
Educational and career guidance is an extremely important life theme. Seemingly minor decisions at key crossroads can have far-reaching consequences.
Our education and our work represent a substantial part of our lives, both in terms of time invested and personal fulfillment.
Having access to all the relevant information in order to make a sound career or educational choice is therefore invaluable.
Astrology is a remarkable tool for understanding and decision-making, provided its interpretive limits are respected and it is used wisely.
It helps us to understand ourselves and to choose consciously.
+ Preliminary notes on the 3rd/9th axis, Gemini / Sagittarius:
The 3rd/9th House axis, or Gemini/Sagittarius, is the axis of education, intellect, reflection, communication, and social integration.
Ruled by Mercury and Jupiter, it is essential to analyze, both in the birth chart and in transits, anything related to one’s opening to society, mental capacities, learning processes, and transmission.
This axis governs the accumulation of knowledge and meaning, as well as their later dissemination.
Understanding learning mechanisms
True understanding inevitably involves analyzing the birth chart and fully integrating it at a personal level.
The birth chart is truly the “root” (also referred to as the “radical chart”), or, as Dane Rudhyar so eloquently put it, a “seed” from which everything originates.
It conditions what will be experienced and provides insight into one’s factors of fulfillment.
It is essential to remember that “personality” and “destiny” are two sides of the same coin.
Analyzing one allows us to infer elements of the other. Any action affecting one resonates in the other, as they form a unified whole, the individual monad evolving in an ascending spiral, where each cycle revisits the same points at a higher level.
+ In childhood and pre-adolescence:
The focus here is primarily on identifying the child’s potential, their strengths and vulnerabilities, rather than defining a concrete direction.
This stage is nonetheless crucial, as it allows for fostering harmonious development and balanced personality growth, while avoiding unnecessary repression, frustration, or trauma (see my article Parents, study your child’s birth chart).
At this stage, the fast-moving planets take precedence (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars). The personality is still structuring itself, exploring, testing, and operating within a rather binary, black-and-white framework.
The psyche tends to function in a dual mode: what is not me is other; what is not good is bad; what is not white is black, and so on.
In this sense, the personal planets express their archetypes and signs in a relatively “pure” way.
It is important to understand the implications of these personal planets, especially when they form complex aspects with one another or with social and/or transpersonal planets.
At this age, tensions often manifest more directly through family and parental dynamics. Parents therefore also have a role to play.
For instance, if a Sun/Moon square is active in a child’s chart, the parents are part of the dynamic that brings this aspect to life, helps it evolve, and, when possible, helps to defuse it.
Encouraging a healthy expression of the child’s Sun and Moon is essential, through activities that build confidence in their abilities, both socially (how they project themselves outwardly) and internally, at an emotional and subjective level.
Mercury holds a special place here. Throughout childhood, it should be carefully analyzed as a key factor in communication and learning, particularly to identify possible “blockages”, introversion, or difficulties with expression and comprehension (see the planetary function of Mercury).
For example, a natal retrograde Mercury may indicate introversion, shyness, or a less outwardly expansive mental function, but it can also reflect strong analytical, introspective, and imaginative capacities.
Aspects involving Mercury can be especially sensitive at this age, as their impact resonates more strongly, both in the birth chart and through transits.
Periods of hyperactivity, nervousness, learning difficulties, or challenges in self-expression may be observed.
A progressed Mercury turning retrograde during childhood may indicate social trauma, the activation of fears, or withdrawal tendencies.
Such a phase must be carefully analyzed over the entire retrograde loop to understand what themes Mercury is emphasizing.
French Astrologer André Barbault, in his book “From Psychoanalysis to Astrology”, states:
“Psychoanalysis teaches that human destiny is shaped in the earliest years of life (Editor’s note: psychoanalysis refers to the first five years; astrologer Dane Rudhyar also emphasized the ‘threshold’ of age seven, correlated with Saturn’s first waxing square, a period during which the psyche absorbs collective environmental content).
Later events, whether happy or unfortunate, are merely a return to an earlier state, the adult attempts to recreate the circumstances of early childhood.
If the foundations of an entire life are laid in these early years, then the first activations of the birth chart and the earliest astrological transit cycles have a decisive influence that sets the tone.
The child is a nebula of affects before becoming a coherent ego, with unconscious impulses constantly striving for conscious expression.
An adult psyche does not appear as a single coherent center surrounded by an unconscious; rather, the psychic whole presents itself as a nebula of tendencies orbiting several centers of unequal importance (the Planets).”
+ From adolescence onward:
At this stage, it becomes possible to establish a school and even pre-professional orientation assessment.
The Individuation cycle has progressed significantly, the ego has consolidated, and the first major generational cycle aspects begin to approach, particularly the squares of the slow-moving planets (notably Jupiter and Saturn cycles).
Here, a medium-term analysis is generally the most relevant. Long-term perspectives may be kept in mind, but should not become the immediate focus, as they may create short-term imbalance. What is required at this stage is patience, benevolence, and above all, an effort to avoid forcing outcomes.
During this phase of life, the Anima and Animus planets, especially Venus and Mars, along with Projection mechanisms, tend to gain strength and play a more prominent role in how the personality expresses itself outwardly.
The social planets, Jupiter and Saturn, also deserve closer attention, as they must gradually assert themselves as the individual enters the socio-professional sphere. They can indicate preferred fields of activity and/or areas of responsibility.
At this stage, it is essential to keep the field of possibilities as open as possible and to experiment with as many avenues as resonate with the personality.
Each experience can later become an “evolutionary building block”.
For example, once the primary 20% of dominant factors in the birth chart have been identified (see the Pareto principle and astrology), the goal is to give them as much conscious expression as possible.
This allows the relevant archetypes (signs, planets) to find concrete, tangible outlets in real life, ideally at this stage through play, creativity, and pedagogical or recreational approaches.
One might offer a specific book, suggest a film, encourage involvement in an association related to a particular discipline, enable travel, or support any experience that can spark an “awakening” of a targeted area of the chart !
+ In the working world for adults:
Career direction, job changes, professional reorientation, entrepreneurship (see Astrology in business), strengths and weaknesses…
A professional astro-diagnostic can, in some cases, shed a new light on your current choices and future prospects by correlating the birth chart with past and upcoming cycles.
Our professional choices, quite directly, are almost always linked to our psychological complexes and our deepest aspirations.
Understanding them means understanding what motivates our choices, our dreams, and our limitations.
Here, the study of factors that help us give profound meaning to life becomes central : transpersonal planets (Uranus, Neptune, Pluto), the Black moon, the Lunar Nodes, the Sun, the Ascendant, the Midheaven, the angles, everything that ultimately shapes what we call a “destiny”, an Individuation process, and a full life trajectory.
Among the angles, the 10th House (the MC, the zenith) is of particular importance. Traditional astrology associates it with “destiny”. It represents culmination, a sector of social recognition, the expression of one’s function, career, and ambitions.
If a planet occupies this sector, it can provide a clue as to modes of realization. However, an “empty” Midheaven does not mean that nothing will happen professionally.
This house acts as a focal point for the outward projection of the personality in terms of social ascent.
Work is one of the foundations of adult life. We devote a great deal of time and energy to it, and it is truly one of the keys to personal fulfillment.
Any repression in this area will therefore be amplified and become a source of deep frustration, something that should be avoided whenever possible.
+ How can one truly flourish if one’s own Sun does not feel it belongs where it is ?
+ How can human life be removed from a perspective of sublimation ?
From a holistic view of the human being, how could one imagine a “partial realization” ?
Either one is fully realized, or one is not. And in the spirit of giving conscious expression to one’s natal energies, it is indeed the entirety of the chart that matters…
Put differently, a “good career orientation” should allow for the full and healthy expression of the personal planets, avoid frustrating individuality, build upon karmic foundations that are already integrated, and help move toward fundamental incarnation goals.
It should also support the outward expression of the social planets and align with the core ideals and deeper meaning of the transpersonal planets.
Hierarchizing the different dominant factors in the birth chart is therefore essential in order to determine precisely what is imperative and what is ultimately secondary.
Understanding the fulfillment of cycles helps clarify what needs to be developed in the present moment.
Some educational books can be very useful for this purpose. Through charts to be completed based on one’s own birth chart and coefficient systems, it helps identify which archetypes are most likely to be activated in the socio-professional sphere. While necessarily general in scope, it offers a practical and synthetic approach to career guidance through astrology.
The Japanese concept of “finding one’s Ikigai” seems particularly relevant, as it provides a framework for synthesizing one’s innate potentials.
Exploring one’s professional past in depth, and analyzing it, is also extremely important. It represents both a liability and an asset, in the sense that it is where we come from, and therefore the very foundation upon which we can build something new in the present.
We do not have to create “ex nihilo”, from nothing; we must know how to rely on what has already been built, even if certain elements need to be “cleared out” because they no longer resonate with who we are today.
Current cycles provide us with a sense of “timing”, in other words, they indicate what is most likely to actualize in our lives from this point onward…
Deciding when to do what?
Whether it concerns learning, career orientation, or a new professional direction, evolving with time and in harmony with the rhythms of universal cycles is essential (if not unavoidable).
Understanding and full integration form the foundation of any sound decision, but there is another key factor to consider: the temporal factor, which defines “when”, that is, the chronology of fulfillment.
This “when” is absolutely crucial, yet its nature must be properly understood. Any analysis of timing must take into account the individual’s age and life experience.
Everything has its proper time for expression, and attempting to force the premature manifestation of a birth chart potential is not only useless, but can also prove counterproductive (and even harmful) within the Individuation process.
A child, for instance, must live their childhood fully, with all that entails: mistakes, “wasted” time, foolishness. It is pointless, and entirely counterproductive, to burden them with long-term considerations they are not yet capable of grasping.
Astrology is a complex language (see Astrological Interpretation) that grants access to a form of transcendent knowledge.
Yet for this knowledge to be truly useful in real-life decision-making, it must always be applied with wisdom.
It is this wisdom that determines its effectiveness and relevance. Beyond the raw data astrology provides, one must be able to analyze it correctly in order to determine precisely “what to do, and at which time”.
There is therefore no “magic formula” for a “good orientation”. It must be properly articulated with the birth chart’s structural foundations and with current astrological cycles, so as not to act out of sync.
For example, if natal Uranian energies are emphasized in the year ahead, they should be consciously explored during that period, regardless of deeper incarnational evolutionary axes.
It can be extremely important to maximize activations along the 3rd House / 9th House axis in order to pursue learning, training, acquire new knowledge, and work, through various means, toward better integration within the collective.
The temporal factor is crucial. “Good timing” means integrating the understanding that there is a time for everything, and that each thing comes to those who know how to wait. Above all, however, it requires fully living and accomplishing the present moment (see Karma in astrology).
There are periods that necessarily involve drifting, mistakes, or confusion, times often labeled as “lost” and deemed useless, yet which are, even unconsciously, highly constructive.
I am well aware that we live in a reductive modern Western culture that fosters desires for immediacy, the mentality of “everything, right now”.
As a result, it can be difficult for a client to hear that a transit will last for years, that it represents a necessary span of time for something to establish itself and unfold…
Yet the reality of life is built over time, in the long term. Each moment lived is a brick upon which the next one is laid, these are the rhythms of nature.
Think of pregnancy: it takes nine months to bring a child into the world, not nine weeks or nine days. And even if nine women were involved, it would not happen nine times faster. Creation works this way, it is immutable.
Above all, remember this: Any decision made wisely, at the right moment, and based on sound understanding, is a good decision.
Ultimately, you cannot do better than that. And if you already have a solid grasp of the “astrological keyboard” and your birth dominants, you already possess 80% of what is needed for sound orientation.
I will return in the future to the themes of education and career guidance in astrology, which are truly fundamental subjects, particularly child astrology, a major issue for the evolution of our society…
See Parents, study your child’s birth chart.