In prior posts, I’ve investigated several different ways of astrologically identifying your past and future karma using invaluable information gained by attending workshops/retreats led by Judy Hall many years ago.
Sometimes these indicators fit together nicely and, for the most part, point in the same direction. Sometimes, however, they do not.
Karma with personal relationships
It’s been my personal experience that souls incarnate at a particular place and time to deal with multiple of issues usually to deal with unfinished business with particular persons.
It’s also been my personal experience that although sometimes you have no idea that someone is pushing one of your ‘karmic buttons’, in other cases you know that someone is ‘special’ for you in some way from the moment that you meet.
Finally, it’s been my experience that the nature of that unfinished business always shows up in the synastry (comparison grid) between two individual’s natal charts. This identifies the essential energies in play between the pair as well as showcasing what has brought them together in the first place.[1]
When looking a synastry aspects, the closer the contact (within 0-5 degrees of orb) the more you’ll feel it. The conjunction is the most powerful of all the karmic contacts and if it’s close (within 1-2 degrees) it’s guaranteed whether or not admitted, you will BOTH feel it.
Also when looking for signs of karmic connections, the contacts of most interest are between (1) the personal planets of one person (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter, and Saturn) and (2) the karmic planets of the other (Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Chiron).
| Karmic Planet | Nature of issue | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Pluto | Power-over issues (subtle and obvious) | Moon/Pluto – this is typical for mother-child relationships that manifest in dependency issues where one person lives his/her life through the life of the other. |
| Neptune | Subtle debts, illusions, challenge for unconditional love | Neptune/Venus – this is the classic soulmate syndrome – the soulmate fails to love the other in the way that they have in the past – sometimes the only answer is to walk away and set them free. |
| Uranus | Freedom/ commitment issues and acting as a catalyst to find a new way to express the relationship | Uranus/Mercury – the Uranus person forces the situation where the Mercury person must finally say what he really believes/feels. |
| Saturn | Karmic debts often revolving around duty (to stay) | Saturn/Venus – Venus sparkles in the social limelight, Saturn sulks. Her very existence remind him of his saturnine ineptitude. He puts her down. She flirts to compensate. He gets jealous and controlling. Both parties are miserable but feel duty bound to stay together for financial, family, and/or religious reasons. |
| Chiron | Healing wounds and finding integration | Chiron/Venus- triggers some wound we carry from the past regarding our sense of personal self-worth. The dynamics between the two persons brings this to a head hopefully allowing a suitable solution to be found. |
Soul Mates
Perhaps the most problematic of all the karmic connections is that commonly known as the soul mate. These are carefully programmed old patterns of emotions and behaviours that run very, very deep. The aim of the soul mate game is to step off the karmic treadmill (habits) and find a new way to handle the relationship.
Unfortunately, more often than not, this proves impossible and it all ends in tears. This is not only because it really does take ‘two to tango’, but also because when it comes to ‘soul mates’, Neptune, planet of illusion, delusion, and downright deception is always involved. Often this points to prior patterns of collusion – i.e., you each played into the other’s distorted understanding of reality.
Example
When I moved to the Netherlands back in 1994, I met a glamorous red-haired Dutch woman who stole my heart and more. I started having spontaneous past life regressions (walking through Dam Square and finding myself dressed in clothing from the 1920’s) and other mystical experiences (I knew what she was thinking without it being spoken aloud and vice versa). Back then, I didn’t know anything about astrology, but I was prompted to explore it – I needed answers to what was happening to me – after all I was a logical international tax lawyer (and she was too) – what could this ‘fairyland’ dream adventure be about?
Her Neptune fell smack on my Sun in synastry.[2 I painfully experienced the pursuit of glamour that comes with connecting up with a soul mate. She didn’t look very happy either. In our present incarnation, we were face-to-face with each other every day (she was my boss) yet we never dealt with our ‘reality’ in a realistic way.
From the start, I knew in my heart, she was ‘mine’ but that I’d ‘lose her. It had happened before to ‘us’. In a meditation during my retreat in Glastonbury, I was walking up steps to a big house in the icy, dark, cold of mid-winter and my glamorous red-haired Dutch woman (in that prior life, my husband), was following me, his/her head bowed. We were in mourning. Twice, I went back down the steps and tried to take his/her hand but he/she refused. Knowing what I did about about that which we’d be faced in the ‘future’, I thought that if only we could be closer in the past, that things would be different. They were not.
In our separate natal charts, our nodes were reversed (which will always be the case with those born 9 years apart). Karmically, the reversed nodes suggests that we are meant to learn from each other in this incarnation but are heading in opposite directions: she is meant to accomplish that which I’ve already accomplished and vice versa. In a North Node meditation directed by Judy Hall, the glamorous red-haired Dutch woman and I (both dressed in fabulously beautiful furs) were stuck alone in a face-off on a ‘ice island’.
The last time I saw that glamorous red-haired Dutch woman in real life was back in the summer of 2002 in Amsterdam at her retirement party. I’ve never seen or heard from her again except that, every once and awhile, she erupts unbidden, illusive as ever, in my dreams.
[1] Whilst synastry examines the impact one person has the other, a second technique – a composite chart – uses the individual natal charts to create a whole new third chart. This represents the relationship as a whole and provides insight into the dynamics upon which it, as a relationship, functions. By comparing the two techniques, we often find repeating themes, which of are of special interest because they will have a significant, longer-term impact on the relationship. For purposes of this blog post, I’ll only consider the synastry but the combinations of the two planets in a composite chart will, symbolically, tell the same story.
[2 In our composite chart, Uranus/Venus (freedom in the relationship/breaking the ‘old’ contract/bond), Mars/Pluto (this could be the power struggle with the sibling – that showed up with Mars in own 3rd house), and Moon/Saturn (mother/child ‘duty’ and ‘debts’ that now need to be repaid) were closely highlighted.
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