The Astrology of Family Dynamics

214 Pages·2001·3.08 MB·English

by  Erin Sullivan

The Astrology of
Family Dynamics
ERIN SULLIVAN

First published in 2001 by
Weiser Books
P. O. Box 612
York Beach, ME 03910-0612
www.weiserbooks.com
Copyright © 2001 Erin Sullivan
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission in writing from Weiser Books. Reviewers may quote brief passages.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sullivan, Erin.
[Dynasty]
The astrology of family dynamics / Erin Sullivan,
p. cm
Originally published: Dynasty. London : Arkana : Penguin Books, 1996, in series: Contemporary astrology.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-57863-179-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Astrology. 2. Family—Miscellanea. I. Title.
BF1729.F35 S85 2001
133.5-dc21 00-50328
BJ
Cover design by Kathryn Sky-Peck
Printed in the United States of America
08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01
0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for
Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992 (R1997).
Contents
Introduction
PART I : The Big Picture: The Organic Family
1. The Individual and the Collective
THE FAMILY OF HUMANITY
EVOLUTION AND REVOLUTION: ROUND AND ROUND WE GROW
2. The Nuclear Family as a System
WHAT IS A FAMILY SYSTEM?
WHAT HOLDS THE FAMILY SYSTEM TOGETHER?
WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF A FAMILY?
ASTROLOGICAL MODELS OF OPEN AND CLOSED FAMILY SYSTEMS
3. Family Patterns and Family Trees
4. The Sun and Moon in Families
ASTROLOGY IS NOT GENDER-BIASED
THE SUN AND SOLARISM
SOLAR THEMES IN FAMILY DYNAMICS
THE MOON AND LUNACY
LUNAR THEMES IN FAMILY DYNAMICS
5. Mothers and Fathers: Freud Had It Half Right
6. Family Themes: Movers and Shakers in the Family
FAMILY ROLES (FAMILY SECRETS; THE SCAPEGOAT; THE BLACK SHEEP;
THE MEDIATOR OR CIRCUIT BREAKER; THE CATALYST)
7. Families and Our Familiars
SEEING THE INSIDE ON THE OUTSIDE
PART II : Family Dynamics
8. The Modal Family: The Tension of Life
CARDINAL
FIXED
MUTABLE
9. The Elemental Family: Circuits of Being
FIRE: I AM
EARTH: HERE WE ARE, WHEREVER WE ARE
AIR: I THINK, THEREFORE YOU ARE
WATER: WE ARE ALL ONE
10. The Water Houses; The Ancestral Eyes of the Soul
THE TWELFTH HOUSE: THF. COSMIC FAMILY SOUL
THE FOURTH HOUSE: THE ANCESTRAL FAMILY OF ORIGIN
THE EIGHTH HOUSE: THE ANCESTRAL LEGACY–MEMENTO MORI
11. Families in Flux: Transits and Moving Forward
NATAL PLANETS AND ANGLES: FAMILY CORE-THEMES
TRANSITS TO THE NATAL HOROSCOPE AS A FAMILY DYNAMIC
PART III: Dynasty
12. Real Lives, Real People
13. Tobias: Touched by God
14. Mohsin: Who am I?
15. Rejected in the Womb
16. What's Bred in the Bone: The Circuit Breaker
17. The Procession of the Ancestors
18. The Last in the Line: The Many in the One
Appendix
THE KENNEDY FAMILY
OVER-DEVELOPMENT IN A SIGN
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
Origins and roots cannot be amputated or divorced by conscious will—by one's self or by another. Our roots
and ancestral heritage cannot be dissolved by human mandate. There is that which seems, and that which is,
and the illusions of both are as real as we might imagine. Thus I acknowledge my ancestors, my parents and
my family of origin. Just as there is no real beginning or end of a cycle, there is no beginning or end of a
family or an individual. However much we are made of others, there is a spark of originality, of something
unknown and new, which lies in the soul of each of us. This is the Promethean fire of truth-seeking and
survival, of renewal and continuance. Thanks to my family, my Promethean side is very, very well
developed!
The two Geminis, my brother Robbie Lamoureux and his father—my late stepfather—Bob Lemoureux, are
a very important part of my own unconventional family experience, and have spread the genes out a bit.
Especially my stepfather, who was an objective, compassionate eye and loving support.
Many of my astrological friends have at various times fed me with their family stories and allowed
themselves the freedom to talk about their planetary family dynamics and listen to some of my own, but
especially I want to mention a few whose stories have been shared in conversation and confidence and who
in some way, indirectly, gave me the confidence that what I was seeing was working: Melanie Reinhart,
Lindsay Radermacher, Jim Lewis, Brian Clark and Ani Black. Many, many of my clients have affirmed the
phenomenon of dynastic lineage through the planets and those are too numerous and confidential to list, but
thank you each and every one.
Most importantly, I thank my daughters, Spirit and Yesca, for being the next step forward into a new world,
one which I can inhabit for only part of their time; now, for thirty-two years, I have shared life with two of
the most remarkable combinations of historic family dynamics! Both are
prisms of their origins, but absolutely unique unto themselves; both are finding ways of being that have no
exemplar. They too are Promethean creatrices! And to the next in line, my grandchildren for whom I wish a
good life and an influence in their world.
Thanks to Carmen Reynal for helping midwife the manuscript; and to the late Jim Lewis, my dear friend
and brother in soul, for sharing ideas and family stories.
On the practical side of things: thanks to Robert Curry and Barry Street at the Astrology Shop in Covent
Garden, London, for supplying me with chartservice and for the astrological contribution; to Bernadette
Brady for her understanding of the ‘heat of the moment’ of the writer's seizure and for faxing, writing and
sending me the JigSaw graphics I have used for ‘Toby’ and for the Kennedy family case-example in the
appendix; and to my son-in-law, Philip Ginn for the ‘big picture’ diagrams. And, as always, to Barbara
Levy, my London literary agent, who helped me with the process by indulging some very elaborate ideas
which took place throughout the development of the book!
Last but not least, to the individuals whose stories appear in The Astrology of Family Dynamics. These
people have my deepest respect; they are all courageous in their own ways and they are amazing individuals,
each and every one. There are five stories in this book—all of which are more remarkable than I can even
begin to portray; they shared these stories with me, and worked with me to bring myself and thus you, the
reader, a deeper understanding of how mysterious is the web in which we find ourselves at the center! They
are all exemplars of individuals who have needed to go back into their family matrix to wrest from it a
measure of their own essence, and who understand this process to be just that—an ongoing, evolutionary
drama which lies in infinity.
Introduction
Devotion 17
No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe;
every man is a peece of the continent, a part of the maine;
if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse
as well as if a Promontorie were,
as well as if a Mannor of they friends, or of thine owne were;
Any Mans death diminishes me,
because I am involved in Mankinde;
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
(John Donne)
In these days there seems a strange longing to understand our origins in new ways. Family values, family
structure and the maintenance of the family has become increasingly topical in the minds of the collective on
a global scale. There is a powerful need to discover how to keep families intact during times of sweeping
change. People talk of going back to old values, creating new structures and finding new ways of coping
with social chaos but still retaining the sustaining aspects of families. Families are indeed changing in some
ways, but we are still bred from the same sources and are contained in the archetypal family structure even
though the social aspect and the apparent function of the family has and will likely continue to alter
drastically. But, since there is nothing new under the sun, only old things uncovered, recovered and
rediscovered, there is very little that can be said about individuals and families that has not already been
considered. Except in the astrological framework.
Very difficult, this business of families. The power of the individual lies in his or her attachments to others,
which is a paradox. We can only be unique by comparison, free by realizing our entrapment, individual in
relation to the collective. There is an inherent difficulty in families that is an
amplified magnification of the same aspect of difficulty in the analysis of an individual. That difficulty
seems rather like trying to fix the fan-belt in a car while the motor is still running. How can one come to an
absolute, final opinion about a fluid entity made up of as many moving components that a person, let alone
that a ‘family’ has? The answer is it cannot be done.
Astrology comes closest to replicating the dynamics of individuals and their families. The solar system itself
operates much in the same way as a family does. Within the solar system itself we can isolate various
bodies, such as the Sun and the Moon, or Saturn and so forth, and find cycles and patterns within their own
individual behaviour. We can pair them up and see large cycles, phases etc., but we cannot find a repetitive
pattern in the solar system as an entire entity and thus it cannot be contained in any rigid model–physical,
mythological or psychological. The astronomical-astrological system is in perpetual motion, re-configuring
and re-constellating on a constant, fluid basis. It is the exemplar of hyman dynamic action and is in itself a
family of individual, powerful bodies inextricably tied in together, creating a self-supporting life-system—
an organic whole made up of unique and individualistic parts.
In this way, the individual is both enhanced and annihilated by his or her participation in a family. It is
evident that we need families, for it strikes me that a person without a family at all is in a more damaged and
desperate state than one who has had to deal with even the most venomous of nests. Families are the testing
ground for all our experience in life. They are with us everywhere, both inside and out. To be able to extend
ourselves out, beyond the confines of the immediate nuclear family, is a must. We are in a new leap in the
global population constellation. At this writing Pluto has just entered Sagittarius and Uranus has just entered
Aquarius. With this signature to leave its imprint for several generations to come, the late 1990s and the first
decade of the 2000s are the years in which we become acutely aware of the shift in perspective needed for
families to survive.
This means change–and change means a period of chaos. And chaos is the genesis of all things. The ‘global
family ’ means that as individuals we are now truly dependent on each other as well as each of us as
individuals having a measure of power in the collective force. There is always, and likely always will be, a
longing for some archetypal soft place, wherein we are loved and nurtured and all is peaceful in the
kingdom. The kingdom now happens to be very large, very round and very much a metalogue. We are
incapable of thinking something without it actually arising in the world—the amazing thing about this is that
we are also going to know about it at about the same time.
The future family seems highly unpredictable at this stage, but we can speak in themes, motifs, tones and
symbols. And since the family system has been changing all around the world—fairly consistendy—there is
a theme for the future of them. If we speak of family breakdown, for example, we see it, but we only see it
within the Zeitgeist. In the majority of the post-war Western world change was wrought by volition, desire
and conscious effort because of the vast array of possibilities available in a reasonably stable, comfortable
society. In other less materially, socially or politically fortunate cultures it has come through loss of civil
rights, breakdown in religious order, via forced invasion by enemies, and so forth. But it has happened in all
cultures around the world.
The ‘family ’ as we have known it in our lifetime has become as shattered as it can. There is a re-
combination of elements about. Families will re-form in accord with the new times and respond to the
demands of individuals within them. People will become more creative in their groupings and interrelations.
They will incorporate more people into their family groups, rather like the extended families of old. In the
Athenian 01KCDÇ, for example, the family was based on a system of individual members which moved
out, laterally and hierarchically, from the blood-ties of the immediate relations, into the community. This
might be just where we are headed again in another form–much more connected to the world through the
mind and ideas. Finding ourselves insecure within the smothering nuclear family, we begin to incorporate
others who are ‘family ’ , rather than ‘our family ’ . Like the womb in the hours before birth, the family
which once was a protective container becomes a perilous prison.
Still and all, philosophy and metaphysics aside, we are made up of our families and shall continue to create
our own families based upon that same archetype. The more we become comfortable with that fact, the less
we will be chafing at the bit. I have found that by looking at the astrology of families and the astrology of
the concerned individual in the family, each person feels restored and affirmed by the fact that there is some
precedent and validation for their feelings and being. They all, myself included, find that it is a better thing
to know whence they came than to assume that we are all alone with no predecessor to claim.
I hope that some of the ideas in this book will stimulate greater compassion first towards yourself, then
towards your own family, past, present and
possibly future, and then out to your clients and their family concerns. The main focus of the book is on
themes, nuances, hints, suggestions, lineage, nets and webs—all the subtle connections between family
charts. I have done this because that is what all patterns do—they usually hint and imply. Not all family-
systems scream ‘Sun/Pluto ’! Or ‘Moon/Venus ’ . For those that do, then this book will also be of great
interest, because the interpretation and delineative sections can be taken whole!
To my mind, the most interesting section of Dynasty is the third section, the life stories. These stories
evolved in a fabulous way–and in the course of the writing the people in the stories continued to grow and
change. Really, once begun, their story will never end—and I was in the difficult position of having to make
static, at some point, a kinetic organism! Right up to the last moment of editing, there was life, change,
newness, evolution, individuation and continuance. It is in this section that you will find astrology alive and
well, working with the fluidity of the heavens and seeing how not only individuals but also their familiars
are in harmony with the cosmos. There is something magical about it, but it is also very logical–metaphysics
is simply the ‘large overall nature of things ’ , and certainly much of what happens in families falls into this
category.
To my pleasure, but not to my surprise, I found that the moment I began to work on the stories, the process
of growth and discovery for each of the protagonists and their families quickened. Events and changes began
to evolve rapidly—as if, by attention, they were nurtured to achieve greater momentum in their own sphere.
There is the phenomenon of watching, feeding and promoting that delivers liberation to facets of oneself that
recline sleeping. The mystery of it lies in the fact that by focusing through the eyes of one person, the
perspective of the entire family begins to alter. They need not even know this is happening for it to occur
spontaneously. I was acutely aware that this would transpire, and thus was very careful about whom I asked
to take part in my work. I knew that it would blow open whole avenues of unexplored material and would
loosen things stuck or sleeping in hidden or secret places in the psyche–that is part of what the astrologer is
about.
The best side of all of this looking and seeing is that it really works–by knowing what unresolved
complexes lie in the centre of the family, they can be expiated and the chances of healing them in successive
generations is very good. It is true that the unresolved problems and complexes of the parents and the
previous generations are manifest in the children in various
ways, but it is equally true that working on these problems or bringing them to consciousness, and thus to
light, does lessen the burden–in that area—for the next generation.
Oxford, January 1996
PART I
The Big Picture:
The Organic Family
1.
The Individual and
the Collective
THE FAMILY OF HUMANITY
DYNASTIC LINEAGE: THE BIG PICTURE
We might look back over aeons and recognize our own personal self-development–just as we emerge from
the womb, into our infancy, through our developmental years, past adolescence, into our twenties, the
Saturn-return, the thirties, the mid-life transition, to maturity in the fifties and second Saturn-return phase
and on into dotage, so does the collective culture emerge and develop. If we see this as a cycle, and not as a
linear experience, then the relationship between the individual and the collective becomes quite intimate.
Just as a culture evolves, so does an individual: from embryo–total psychic participation with the
environment–to birth through the initial stages of individuation, into full ego, or awareness of self, and the
subsequent developmental periods, the process is remarkably parallel to how we appear to have evolved as a
collective world-humanity.
We like to believe that the archaic mind was holistic, in that it perceived no split between nature and culture.
There existed no differentiation between the individual and his environment, no split between man and god,
no vast chasm between thought and feeling or the sacred and profane. This kind of consciousness is called
mythopoeic and can best be described as a state of mind in which one participates wholly in the environment
without conscious awareness of the separation from others or from the natural environment. These archaic
peoples, so-called primitives, appear to have been peaceable, relating to their environment as they would to
their own inner selves. Their known rituals involved what the French mythographer Lévy-Bruhl termed
participation mystique. That is, their consciousness was at one with the external world and their psychic
relationship with nature wholly participatory–they did not subordinate nature in the way in which we now
do, but took from nature what was needed for survival and apparently had a respect for animals, trees, the
elemental forces and various celestial phenomena which is keenly lacking today.
We know little about these most archaic humans–palaeontology shows us bony structures, the skeletons of
our ancestors, some of their relics and tools, but not much about their culture. We truly know nothing. Just
as we know nothing about our intra-uterine experience. We speculate and have ideas, but no real knowledge
of prehistorical humanity. It is the same with consciousness before birth. In the womb we existed in a realm
beyond temporal and spatial differentiation, suspended in a warm, nurturing, eternal space. The rustic
lifestyle of the archaic man was clearly fraught with survival-danger and primal terror, but he likely did not
have neurosis or anxiety complexes. Just as archaic civilization did, the incubating embryo has danger
during its development and psychologically it appears that this psychic knowledge of threat-in-the-womb
affects the development of consciousness in the maturing person. Just as archaic man knew of his
environmental threats, so does the gestating infant, and though those threats are pre-conscious, they are
highly effective in the psychological developmental process.
Infants, once born, do have survival concerns just as infant cultures have survival issues–but they do not
have conscious worries about their relationship with their environment. Those problems arise much later in
development–in parallel with the emergence of the individual ego and, in the case of cultural development,
the collective ego. Babies are not neurotic, but the seeds for such a condition are embedded in this infantile
ground. Serious threats to an infant's development will register in both the psyche and the viscera, setting the
tone for its future growth, body and soul. Likewise, serious threats to the process of culture arrest, or even
retard to extinction, entire cultural collectives. At worst, a culture can die out like the Inca did, but at best a
culture flexes, mutates and adapts creatively to its external conditions and inner impulses. These potentials
are also ours, as individuals.
As the ego of a child emerges from its psychic-womb, it begins to separate out its own identity from that of
its mother and recognize itself as distinct and different from others. The baby is still wholly dependent, but
clearly recognizes itself in relationship to others, and gradually begins to experiment with that relationship
as the ego grows stronger and more impelling–and as its physical prowess increases. Cultures break out of
the
insular mode and begin to transgress the boundaries of different cultures, becoming assimilated,
antagonistic, or allied…so do we with our ‘others’.
Ultimately, this breach between subjective self and objective other–which we call perspective–is good and
necessary; however, it can become so vast a rent in consciousness as virtually to destroy an individual's
connection to his or her deepest, inner Self, and divorce him or her from the sacred and divine aspect of life.
Certainly we have seen this chasm in cultural development grow increasingly vast—the ancient Greeks
worried about it, fretted and developed a philosophy based upon the separation of the sacred and the
profane. Hesiod, the sixth-century BC Greek agrarian-poet, felt that cutting trees, making canoes and plying
the waters was unnatural and would result in all sorts of abominations against natural law. If only he had
known—; or maybe he did in diachronous time—just how far his descendants would impose themselves
upon nature's reserves.
As our global culture has developed, so have we as individuals: our own small frames of reference–our
families–have undergone radical rearranging in just the last century, and particularly in the last thirty years,
and are now rapidly fragmenting into unique formations. All these changes have rendered a social chaos,
which truly is the genesis of all things. The long-term result will likely re-form collective groups into new
cultural, philosophical and familial arrangements. The movement of the planets in a generational fashion
describes how this is so and how we, as individuals, operate within that big picture.
The last 2,500 years have shown a remarkable evolutionary leap–technically, intellectually, physically and
socially.
1 The quickening of consciousness results now in a time in which a re-connection with natural law is urgent.
The movement towards the epoch which will be ruled by the sign Aquarius, and away from the 2,100-year
period of Pisces, marks a turning point from one way of viewing the world collectively towards a new,
idealistic yet practical view. These epochal shifts are relative to our development as individuals within the
collective ethos. As individuals we cannot move beyond the parenthetical boundaries of the epochal vision–
even the rare Atman is a product of the time.
The Piscean age (ruled by Neptune and being the epoch from c. I BC to AD 2060) seems to have acted as a
collective womb in which the compartmentalized concepts of the body-mind-soul of humanity have gestated
to the point of giving birth to themselves as a single entity. The global family–unus mundus–is in the last
stages of incubation, indeed, it is in the birth
canal. The fast-approaching Aquarian epoch (ruled by Uranus and also around 2,100 years long) will
demand a relationship between the individual and the collective which is more mutually interdependent.
This is in direct contrast to the Piscean Christian imagery wherein someone else died for our sins, or wherein
a monotheistic male god is the one responsible for all earthly and mortal action, and a cultural ethos in
which the collective is responsible for the individual. This has ultimately resulted in a great fracturing of
societies, and an alienation of individual persons not only from their culture, but from their families, and,
more dangerously, from their own sense of self and divinity. It seems that major transitional periods are
fraught with uncertainty, wherein unity is nowhere, and global disintegration threatens. Parallel to the
collective disintegration lies the loss of identity of individuals.
The shift between the two epochs in which we find ourselves in the millennial period is one marked by a
proliferation of new and experimental ideas. We are, and will be for decades to come, between the old epoch
of Pisces moving in transition towards the coming epoch of Aquarius. In brief the two ages bring this
imagery to mind:
Piscean Age–individuals make up the collective, and the collective itself is responsible for the individual.
Aquarian Age—the collective itself is an organic entity and each individual within it is responsible for the
whole of the collective.
Naturally, this great leap will not in itself be complete until the era is almost done–in about 2,000 years
time! It is a journey of heroic proportions, to be undertaken one-by-one in the name of all. One must not
hold one's breath, however, and must continue to work within the existing systems to push them out beyond
the boundaries of convention. This requires listening to a deep inner Self which has greater intelligence and
longer memory than our intellectual mind.
As Joseph Campbell wrote: The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the
mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed must not, wait for
his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding…It
is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse.’
2 Indeed, we have arrived at the time where the individual is responsible for the collective.
We might look at the big picture in this way (see Figure 1):
Figure 1
1. We have an archaic memory which is the underpinning of all human need for connection to one another–
this is time-out-of-mind.
2. In turn, this is contained within an epochal signature (the Ages: Virgo, Leo, Cancer, Gemini, Taurus,
Aries and our own Pisces Age, on through to the arriving Aquarian Age, etc.) which oversees the major
images and symbols of the time.
3. Then there is the ‘current ethos’ which is at this stage about fifty to sixty years in duration–the Zeitgeist.
The Zeitgeist moves rapidly, however, and is a shape-shifter.
4. Within those temporal motifs exist the various ethnic cultures in the world.
5. And the cultures are further sub-divided into sects with social orders, religious beliefs and historical
context.
6. We further differentiate in that structure into families. Families make up the small clusters, within which,
at long last, lies:
7. THE INDIVIDUAL.
Astrologically, and greatly simplified, we might see this depicted as follows (see Figure 2):
The zodiac: circle of heaven, anima mundi–the world soul. It not only defines the Great Year (26,000-year
cycle of the precession of the equinoxes), but also the earth-year, and the single day. In the individual sense,
it defines the horoscope.
The planets: archetypal human agencies seen against the backdrop of the zodiac. The planets are a global
picture, seen in the same heavens from all points on earth at different times of day. The planets are rendered
individual by locus in the horoscope, by degree, sign and house.
The houses: oikos–Greek for ‘family’ and ‘house’–they contain and mundify inner experiences. These are
the sectors of the heavens as they are divided in accord with the time of day, again in relation to the zodiac.
Houses and families give immediate relevance to outer life. They are one step out of one's own self.

Figure 2
Summary
Transits are just that–moving planets. The planets do not screech to a halt when someone is born; however,
we do fix the planets in time and space to create a horoscope for that person.
It must be remembered at all times that a natal horoscope is a picture of the transits at the time of
one's birth.
With this in mind, it becomes apparent that a person is a living, breathing, walking transit, and thus is an
emblem of the Zeitgeist into which he or she was born. We are all of us moments in time, and in this way we
individualize a collective circumstance–we are the constellation of the mundane world, and thus are born
into a very large family.
The incubation of a human is short and fast in ratio to its succeeding lifespan, and if this parallel between
the individual and the collective is even vaguely close, there is hope for humanity on a global scale, though
in the 1990s–the turn of the millennium–there has been a prevailing pessimism. If, indeed, the collective is
not to detonate itself, then a very rapid individuation process is required, and will occur on a consciousness
level. Critical mass is fast approaching, and the generational impetus which might largely be a deeply
unconscious motivation for survival has mutated already, and will continue to do so rapidly towards a new
level of relationship between the individual and the collective. Without this shift, survival would not be