Dear Madame,

I want to find out more about my future mother-in-law’s money habits. Can I do this with astrology? My mother-in-law is the one who has the most money in the family right now, and she’s already made it clear we need to come prepared with a formal plan before she’ll share any of it. I don’t have her birth time and I’m not comfortable asking for it, but I do have her birth date.

I’ve studied astrology for a couple of years now and I’m hoping you can give me some tips about this. We’ll be visiting her over the holidays this year, and money’s going to be a discussion so I want to be prepared, have every angle covered, and make a good impression.

— The Fidgety Fianceé

Dear darling Fidgets,

Oh, goodie. You’re all building a holiday money-and-truth discussion bomb.

There’s nothing like laying out the finer fiscal points of your honeymoon in the Caymans, alongside the green bean casserole and stuffing, to make the holidays oh-so-warm.

What you may need is the derived houses trick. I’m not saying it’s foolproof, but it’s certainly fun and may gain you a couple of valuable tidbits. However, it’s a slightly more advanced technique, so I don’t recommend it unless you see yourself as someone competently grounded in the astrological basics. As in, you’ve done a few charts for your (honest) friends, and your insight has been deemed ‘accurate’.

With the derived houses trick, you can work with your own natal chart and get a few clues before even attempting your in-law’s chart. I recommend you have a look at your fiancé’s perception of your mother-in-law, since your fiancé is who you’ll be sharing toothpaste with, daily.

Here’s what you do. Get your chart, and put your finger on the 7th house. This house represents your fiancé, now that the relationship’s gotten serious. Next, (counting the 7th house as ‘1’), count counter-clockwise 1-2-3-4. What house do you land in? To you, it looks like your 10th; but from your fiancé’s perspective, it looks like his 4th. This is what we’ll call the ‘derived’ 4th house.

Note the sign on the cusp of the house, what planets are there (if any), and any aspects those planets make. Most importantly note where the house’s ruler is in the chart. That house is particularly important. The derived 4th house and its ruler will represent something about your fiancé’s roots and what’s been inherited through the ages.

You’ll find more clues about money from this side of the family in the next house to the right. Older traditions call this the house of the Father, but newer schools of thought give this house to the Mother. If you can, chat with your fiancé about what you discover. Does the description of what happens here fit the father’s family? Or the mother’s?

(If this all looks complex, it’s because it is complex. This is why people hire astrologers to sort it out.)

Now, beginning with your derived 4th house, count seven houses from the fourth. You’ll land in what looks like your own 4th house. We’ll call this the partner’s derived 10th house. Anciently, this was home of the Mother; more recently, it’s home of the Father. Do the same process of observation as above. Take lots of notes and research what you find.

What themes stand out? What do you find? How do they fit your fiancé’s perception of his family?

This exercise can be a good starting place for the tender topic of money and families. For, like hair color and Great Aunt Gertie’s silver set, attitudes and expectations about money are inherited stuff, and far more influential. Next to personal hygiene gone afoul and infidelity (however you define it), money conflicts drive most divorce proceedings. This is why smart folks hire a good astrologer to have a look at values compatibility before they get married.

Most importantly, though, is your own attitude and habits toward money. Have a look at that first. First.

Why? For one, you can’t control your mother-in-law’s money decisions. Whether she made her money or inherited it, it’s hers to do with as she pleases no matter how much loot she’s got in the vault. For another, astrology has more noble purposes. Attempting to light-finger that lock with some fancy astrology tricks won’t likely serve your path. Gaining a clearer perspective of her values and yours will help heaps, but sometimes you’ve got to get your nose out of the charts and look at your heart, instead.

Inherited family values are one thing, but what are your values? Get clear on those first. You’ll live with them longer than a honeymoon, first mortgage, student loan or, yes, even a marriage.

Yours, with compounded interest,

Madame Z

Your life probably has some focus. Focus is determined by your priorities, and constitutes a large part of your reality. That’s all to the good. In an age when a huge amount of information reaches you instantly from all parts of the globe, you need to pick and choose what will take up your attention, time and energy.

The astrology this week, however, does seem to encourage you to widen your focus just a bit. Again, that will also be a matter of choice.

You might be tempted to focus a bit more on politics as the U.S. presidential race heats up. Or you might need to focus more on family as we approach what for many is a holiday season.

Then again, if you are following astrology you might want to choose a path less often taken. You may want to leave baseball’s world series and the political talking heads to the large crowds they will attract. Could be you would be better off devoting whatever time and energy you have leftover to focus on what you have taken for granted.

Even if you seemingly have no time or energy to spare, you might want to adjust your priorities and attend to your health instead of relying on it. The same may possibly be said for the health of your community, or that of the Earth. For without healthy body, mind, community and planet, how would you be able to focus on anything of your own choosing and apply yourself effectively?

That’s one question being put by today’s Full Moon, and some select (if easier to overlook) astrological events to follow through the end of this month. If ever a Full Moon has taken on a wider focus, it’s this one. Consider its location. As noted in this column on Thursday, the Taurus Full Moon this morning took place in the precise degree of the zodiac where the Moon is possibly most powerful — the lunar degree of exaltation. Additionally, as Amanda described yesterday, that same degree of Taurus is also where Chiron was discovered.

Chiron itself, especially in its opposition from bright Venus today (which Amanda also noted in the comments), is about focus, but not of the narrow variety. Paraphrasing Robert Hand, the type of focus implied by Chiron is holistic, having to do with details upon which an entire system would depend. It’s about knowing what detail needs your attention at any given moment so that the whole can continue to function.

So it is that some often unheeded details of the solar system are combining with and following today’s Full Moon to indicate a wider focus might be the wiser option. It started with Vesta temporarily taking its theme of devotion back to Pisces in retrograde on Sunday. It is as if Vesta needs to attend to a few remaining details that will allow it to focus its fiery advocacy in what will ultimately be a long journey through Aries.

The theme of considering a wider focus then extends to Ceres entering Aquarius today. Eric provided us with the holistic lowdown regarding Ceres (in the midst of what were ostensibly more ‘important’ astrological events) back on Oct. 18. If you haven’t read that piece yet (or to re-read it with re-focused and new appreciation), you will find it linked here.

Finally, when Pallas takes its own priorities of justice and art into Capricorn on Saturday (as both the week and the month draw to a close), you might notice a wider theme. Vesta, Ceres and Pallas are named after ancient goddesses, which were too often taken for granted and not often enough given the focus they deserved.

When Vesta was not given the emphasis she was due, Rome suffered. When Ceres and her concerns were rudely dismissed by the good-old-boy gods of antiquity, Earth suffered. Last, but not least, the failure to honor Pallas with the proper respect never failed to exact a telling toll on the gods, nations and heroes of legend.

Hence, even if you are running as fast as you can to stay in the same place, you may want to at least consider a slightly wider focus this week. Include yourself in that by taking even a small step to better support your health. Include your community by remembering that politicians and politics are only part of the picture. Finally, always remember to include the Earth with an endeavor to leave wherever you go a bit better than you found it.

You are heading into what will, in many ways, be a busy season. Politics, cultural festivities and family relationships will all be clamoring for your attention through the end of the year. Even so, they are but part of a greater whole. A slightly wider focus for the sake of seeing and supporting that greater whole just might be the best investment you can possibly make at this time.

Offered In Service

By Sarah Taylor

This week’s reading is relevant for the next week, and beyond. However, it also links back into the readings of October 11 and October 4. There is a theme playing out. Once again, the invitation is between walking a familiar road, or striking out into new territory.

The Fool, Knight of Cups, Nine of Swords from The Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Röhrig. Click on the image for a larger version.

In short, it asks you to choose between the self-recriminating mind, and beginner’s mind. And there’s a clear bias in favour of the second, mediated by the Knight of Cups (the King of Cups in the Rider-Waite Smith deck). But let’s look back first.

On October 4, the Nine of Swords appeared in the same position it does this week — on the right — where I wrote this:

[T]he Nine is the concretisation of your predicament, your indecision and misgivings solidified into barbs and razored edges that you’re wont to turn on yourself. The Nine is regret, pain, anguish, worry.

“Why did I let that happen?”
“What if I’d made a different decision?”
“I knew I’d fuck it up.”

The most painful part of the Nine is not, however, the truth of your circumstances, but the supposed ‘truth’ you buy into without subjecting it to thorough, dispassionate scrutiny. It is also the supposed ‘truth’ you buy into when you’ve forgotten your blood-red heart beating in your chest, and the love that it holds — for yourself, for others.

The Nine of Swords is a perspective that has become so concretised that the inflexibility is an assault to our inner freedom — the freedom that we experience when our minds have the ability to apply thought creatively. That reading asked you to reach for a third option — one that may have required that kind of creative thought. A shift of perspective.

On October 11, the Knight [King] of Cups appeared on the left, and I wrote this:

The message that the Knight’s presence this week brings: your path may sometimes feel like a lonely one, but only if you close your vision off from the magic of another realm — one that is far more subtle, but which reveals the feathers of your angel wings. In some way, you have demonstrated courage beyond words by holding to your heart-felt convictions. You may have chosen to turn your back on what no longer makes sense to you any more. It didn’t make sense because it ran counter to your values. Now you carry your values with you, openly, unafraid of embodying and living them out.

Here, you can now see what you, the Knight, has in his sights, and what he has not. He has turned away from the Nine — “what no longer makes sense to you” — and towards The Fool. Card 0. The point where something new calls and it is so foreign that it takes the no-mind of The Fool to step fearlessly towards it.

I have a feeling that you, as the Knight, are on the edge of finding out whether your convictions are going to be borne out. You, as the Knight, who has travelled with a heart-felt focus on how you choose to define yourself out in the world and with others, are now looking at The Fool.

Maybe you’re not feeling so sure anymore. Perhaps this is not what you thought it would look like. It could be that you’re realising that your prior expectations had given your journey a particular shape and flavour even as you believed you were keeping an open mind.

If so, this is the time when you get to see how open-minded you’re committed to being. This is not the kind of open-mindedness that compromises your values or your safety, your passions or will. No — it is the kind of open-mindedness that asks you to give more wiggle-room to what is possible. It is asking you to stretch yourself — to exercise that wide-open, powerful, vulnerable heart. The Nine of Swords are the judgements that snap into place and shut you down. You’ll feel them immediately in your body, and you’ll feel a narrowing of perspective that is so sharp that it has a razor’s edge quality to it. No room to move or breathe at all. Fear.

This fear is an illusion.

The Fool is as far away from the Nine of Swords as you can get. And a part of you, dear Knight — somewhere deep inside you (so deep that you may not be immediately aware of it) — has already made its choice.

Barbed wire; or a rose. Cruelty; or compassion. The past; or the unknown. In that moment when you know you’re choosing something new, there are no guarantees. When you do it with your eyes open, and your heart unguarded, I’d suggest it is because you understand that trusting yourself and your choices is a true mark of self-leadership. Guarantees start to pale into insignificance next to the freedom to decide, to act, to take the next step.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: The Fool (Uranus), Knight of Cups (the fiery aspect of water), Nine of Swords (Mars in Gemini)

If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread.