Rising Signs=rising hope

I am about to have a baby boy. I'm very excited and naturally I've been going over the several possible astrological configurations he might have. There are several aspects that are very unique and interesting that will inform his existence such as Mars and Mercury retrograde and Neptune in Pisces, the asteroid Juno conjunct the North Node of the Moon. As the time has drawn closer, well overdue actually, he was supposed to be here March 9th, I noticed that he was lacking  planets in Scorpio's energy. I have a bit of a bias towards Scorpio since I am a double Scorpio (Rising and Sun) and have a 1st house stellium (3 or more forces together) in Scorpio. Naturally I wanted my son to share some of this intense and powerful energy with me but as the day draws closer I realize the only chance I have is a Scorpio Moon and that only by 11 Pm PST Monday!

Until I started thinking about the rising sign the last few days and its manifestation in a personality. Each one of the signs of the zodiac resides on the eastern horizon for about 2 House a day. So each day each one of the styles of presentation offers itself to the varieties of souls born that day. Remembering this I realized there is still a 1 in 12 chance that there will be some prominent form of Scorpio to the boy. Tonight I woke up around 2 AM  tossing and turning my body and mind over all the several ways that people present themselves through the rising sign and I am now going to try and formulate and communicate a coherent thought about it.

There is clearly a bias in society's understanding of astrology towards boiling every individual down to their sun sign. "I'm a Scorpio", "She's a Sag.", "OH, I don't get along with Capricorns" are common phrases heard day in and day out. On the one hand its nice that folks are thinking about and have a working knowledge of one archetype of astrology and they are interested enough to read a short horoscope in their daily newspaper. On the other hand it can be very miss-leading and trivializing to the artful language of astrology not to mention the art and beauty of the soul in human form. 

Pop psychology (even modern forms of academic psychology) act the same way. "I'm a type A personality, don't mess with me" or "you'll never satisfy her she's got OCD" are becoming more and more common refrains from people that manage to boil down complex parameters of life experience into a sentence... if you're lucky. What's worse with a lot of this type of thinking is that there is usually some form of malady attached to the personality type being described and usually some pill in hand to get rid of the "problem".

My point here is that the soul, or individual, is far more complicated and has too varied amount of responses and reactions to the multitude of experiences encompassing a life journey to be boiled down in any way to a sentence or even a paragraph. To do so is a disservice to the evolution of your soul and makes you blind to your true and potential possibilities and in my experience, both psychology and astrology provide far more, when investigated, than "sun signs" or "psychological types".

The Rising sign is one of the articulations that astrology offers to explain a subtle yet very present aspect of a personality's projection. The rising sign is whatever constellation was at the eastern horizon at the time, date, and place of one's birth. If you look at the chart to the left you will see 2 main axis a horizontal and a vertical one. The rising sign is the horizontal axis and the sign on the left of the axis. In my case (that's my chart on the left) Scorpio is the sign that was on the eastern horizon at 4:59 AM on November 22, 1970 in Troy, NY.

The east represents the new day. It's where the sun rises and has correlations to the season spring. This is the time of day and time of year when things sprout or begin. All beginnings have an energy to them of possibility and there is a need for essential freedom for this energy to be fulfilled. The constellation that is rising on the eastern horizon at the time, date, and place of birth represents what type of energy will be projected form a person. This is a per-verbal, pre-thought projection and the person does not generally think of themselves this way.

People know me as intense and passionate but that can happen without me being aware. I can't tell you how many times I have had people stop me to make sure I was all right because they thought some thing was terribly wrong because of the glare and focus in my eyes only to find we smile warmly and friendly and say "no, I'm just going to get some coffee"...

Clearly they experienced my Scorpio rising projection of intensity while I was experiencing something like my 11th House Virgo Moon's desire for thoughtful social interaction through the medium of going to get a cup of coffee! This is the hallmark of the rising sign. It is the way that all the energy within me is funnelled without any work or thought from me. Clearly this is an important and powerful force of personality and is why it is part of the triad generally used to desire a person's astrology along with the sun and moon.

It's a good reminder to me to put aside a silly bias like I want my boy to have that Scorpio energy. He will have some, duh, we all have the energy of ALL the signs one way or another!! Each sign is SOMEWHERE in the birth chart and that energy is therefore within each one of us in some form or another. Everyone also has an 8th House, no way of avoiding that, and that is the resident home of Scorpio. Everyone also has Pluto in their birth chart and Pluto carries energy associated with Scorpio.

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