Astrology Just For Writers
Part 12
Virgo, 6th House and Soul Mates
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Often the best reason to go to a religious service is the jokes told by the Priest, Reverend or Rabbi.
These are usually very old jokes, and I do ever so much relish old jokes as plot-material for stories, just as cliche and misnomer supply reams of raw material for story tellers. There's a reason old jokes survive generation to generation and get laughs from those who are too young to have heard them before -- and that reason is worth deep study if you plan a career in fiction writing. It is most easily revealed by a study of Astrology -- not to "foretell" the future, but to understand Character Arc. So this series of posts is Astrology Just For Writers.
The index to previous posts on Astrology is here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/03/pausing-for-you-to-catch-up-with-me_30.html
The Alien Romance subject we need to look at here, and will later examine in the series of posts on, perhaps, Theme-Character Integration, is, "What exactly IS a human?" Until we can answer that, we can't "create" the Alien who can fall in love with our Human Character.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/index-to-theme-character-integration.html
What Is A Human Being? is a huge topic, much bigger than me, for sure.
But what brought it into focus for me is a joke, which is not surprising because the entire purpose of Comedy is to reveal that which is too big to see. If you want to understand Comedy, study the Mary Tyler Moore show.
http://www.amazon.com/Mary-Tyler-Moore-Show-Complete/dp/B00005JLIC
The particular joke that caught my attention, that I just can't get out of my head, was told by a Rabbi at Yom Kippur Services -- how incongruous! But it worked to open an entire issue Romance Writers must pay attention to, especially when trying to depict an Alien-Human Soul-Mate pair, a very complex Relationship. If it is a Romance, the Relationship must drive the Plot, and that means the writer must know much more about the structure of Human Nature than the reader is likely to know, as well as how and why Characters "arc" -- and how to depict a Character Arc. The core of Depicting (show don't tell) is Theme.
Here is a post laying out the basics of Theme and story structure:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-use-theme-in-writing-romance.html
Here is my earliest post on Soul Mates.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/03/soul-mate-characters-heroic-villainous.html
We've been discussing Soul and Soul-Mate in the context of Romance Craft and how the Romance genre is a natural fit into the Science Fiction Genre for a long time. We've even touched on Comedy, but not on how to use it to reveal an esoteric thematic point in show-don't-tell. That's what this joke does -- expresses a huge abstract notion of the nature of humanity in show-don't-tell.
Here's the essence of the joke, which I can't repeat exactly because I'm not good at comedy:
God was challenged by a Mortal who didn't believe in Him. The Mortal says he can make humans, too, just as God does.
So God accepts the challenge and they repair to an open field to compete. God reaches down and picks up a handful of dirt, and Creates it into a Human. The Mortal then reaches down and picks up a handful of dirt and begins to create a human, but God says, "Wait! You can't use THAT dirt -- I Created that dirt."
If the Mortal uses material that God created, then the Mortal isn't Creating a Human "just as God does." He's using the material God Created. His work is derivative, not original, therefore the entity he creates isn't "Human" in the sense that the Humans God Creates are Human.
This joke begs the question, "What is a human being?"
To define "Human" we generally reference Genesis, where God Creates Adam -- or more precisely Adam Kadmon (the first Man).
Adam Kadmon is not a "man" at all, but a genderless, or composit, template with both male and female nascent within.
Then God separates the female, leaving a "man" who is no longer the First Human.
The premise of my Sime~Gen Series is that the Sime~Gen Mutation is of the same order of basic Creation as that separation into male and female, so you have male and female Simes and male and female Gens -- whereupon family relationships become extremely complex, and Romance takes on a whole new meaning. Playing with Worldbuilding at that original level of Creation makes a writer research and ponder the very essential nature of humanity, so I've spent decades burrowing into Tarot and Astrology, as well as Kabbalah, and every other religion.
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This post on the Astrology of the 6th House is to mull over an observation about the meaning of the 6th House as it pertains to the phenomenon of Soul Mate. The plot-driver of the Sime~Gen Series is all about Karma and Soul Mates.
By the time you read this, the audible.com audiobook edition of the Sime~Gen novel,
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As always when studying the "Houses" of Astrology, focus on the "Natural" Houses -- with Aries as the 1st House and Pisces as the 12th.
In this case we are studying the Soul Mate properties of the 6th House.
Because the Astrological zodiac is depicted as circular, divided into 12 "Houses" -- and 12 "Signs" -- which exactly coincide in the Natural position (with 0 degress Aries Rising -- or "on the Eastern Horizon" --) therefore the 6th House is opposite the 12th.
This is an obvious fact, one that is just so blatantly "in your face" that you don't see it.
But the astrological wheel graphically represents something that is equally obvious in the most ordinary glyph used to represent the Kabbalistic Tree Of Life.
That "something" is "opposites." The very nature of opposites, the fundamental concept of "opposition" is so pervasive in our lives that we don't notice it even when we're talking about it.
Both the astrological chart and the Tree of Life smack us between the eyes so hard with this obvious fact that we just don't notice it. It's too big. The fact is too stunning to comprehend.
That fact is: opposites exist.
Matter exists. So does "anti-matter." The entire universe is constructed symmetrically -- so why wouldn't you think a Human Being is not symmetric? We are symmetric on the outside, sort of -- most people a just a bit asymmetric, which lends them "character." If we are symmetric on the outside, why wouldn't we be symmetric on the inside, composed of Opposites?
It is so simple, so obvious, we just don't incorporate it into our thinking when we plot a Romance Novel. We think male-female, and that's the only pair of opposites. But look at the astrological chart, and look at the Tree of Life -- more than one pair of opposites make up the total pattern.
"Opposites Attract" -- yeah, we all know that and use it when creating a "pair" who will fall madly in love at first sight.
What is it about opposites -- and what has that to do with
human nature as depicted in the Rabbi's joke?
The punch-line of that joke, which I can't replicate, is where God says "You can't use my dirt and say you are Creating as I Create." You have to Create your own dirt, then make a Human. Maybe you can Create humans -- but can you Create dirt? Clay? A specific type of dirt that can be molded into a human?
We, (most Human cultures) assume that the Spiritual is OPPOSITE the Material.
We assume Soul is different from, perhaps incompatible with, Body.
We assume Soul and Body are TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.
We assume that Soul-Mate and Lust-for-Monkey-Sex are two different things.
We assume that one or the other must DOMINATE.
The proposition to mull over, in order to understand what the 6th House, Virgo, (the accountant, Ruled by Mercury) is that the target state is BALANCE.
Here is a thumbnail sketch of the "meaning" of the Houses given to beginners in Astrology -- misleading in many ways, but a starting point. It "depicts" the Relationship of Opposites.
Ponder the concept of a dynamic equilibrium, a balance of balances where everything swings, and moves, dances, but stays in a dynamic tension with Pure Energy (what I've termed in previous posts here as Godshine) flowing from one state to the other and back again. A circuit in perfect BALANCE.
All the assumptions about dividing the world into two-things and then fighting until one or the other dominates, are rooted in our modern culture's origin in the Hellenistic, or Ancient Greek culture that produced Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, et. al.
Fighting to Dominate is what the entire pantheon of Greek gods did, and the impetus to fight and to bully Humans, to rape Humans to create Heroes, came from the explicitly described dysfunctional (insane) family relationships among the gods. It's all there in the mythology.
As a result of what we've inherited from the Helenistic Cultures, we live in a zero-sum-game culture, modeled and transmitted by Football, and other sports where you keep score to determine a winner, convincing all children that this is Reality.
This non-verbal absorption of a conviction makes any other concept of Reality "unthinkable" -- just literally unthinkable. Our language contains no words for what the horoscope wheel and the Tree of Life depict, so we can't think these thoughts.
The science fiction romance writer must think such thoughts -- then find words to convey the illusion of understanding the alien.
So let's look deeper into the unthinkable alien.
To determine a winner, there must be a loser.
Winner and Loser are considered "opposites." But are they?
Winner and Loser come in PAIRS - pairs of opposites - incompatible opposites where one must dominate the other. If one wins the trophy, the other can't have that trophy -- the trophy doesn't suddenly become two-trophies. What kind of a "marriage" is that? Where's the Romance in "I get and you don't." Is winner/loser the correct paradigm to describe the reality of Romance?
Is the immersion of our culture in "Sports" the reason many readers won't touch Romance because the underlying concept of the Happily Ever After ending seems "unrealistic?"
In a true Happily Ever After ending, you can not have one of the couple dominating the other -- because the misery of the one dominated will eventually lead to rebellion. The Sport paradigm disallows any kind of resolution where one does not dominate the other.
Is Reality Created in incompatible pairs of opposites? Or is there another Relationship that explains how Reality really works? This is the subject of The Not So Minor Arcana. Here we're looking at that subject via Astrology.
Giving every kid a 'certificate' for showing up is not the same as preventing them from internalizing the dominance-based model of the universe, as it differs from the balance-based model of the universe depicted in the Zodiac and the Tree of Life.
The Zodiac was familiar to the Helenistic culture, but the Tree of Life was not common to Aristotelian thinking.
We artificially divide humans into Soul and Body to force the concept "Human" into that Aristotelian either/or model of reality.
The misconception is that Reality is "either/or" based (all computers today are either/or based).
The Bible, however, is entirely rooted in a totally different (opposite, and not incompatible) model of reality.
The Bible starts with that Creation story which culminates in the Creation of Male and Female -- in the Divine image.
Perhaps the concept "Human" as depicted in the Bible actually explains to us what we will encounter when we get out into Space and find Intelligent Life on other planets -- or perhaps we may find already space-faring civilizations.
So lets think about the concept Human in terms of the 6th House.
The salient clue is that the 6th House is the opposite of the 12th House.
6th House is labeled, in this diagram, Service and Health -- but it represents your job, what you do to make money, and the manner in which you do it. 6th House is Virgo ruled by Mercury.
The 12th House is commonly labeled "self-undoing" -- the syndrome where you are your own worst enemy, hoist on your own petard, "busted." But that's only one possible manifestation. The 12th House is Pisces, ruled by Neptune.
Neptune ordinarily manifests as "dissolution" or "confusion" -- but one common manifestation is Romance. 12th House, Pisces, Neptune, all together define Romance, and the Soul Mate experience.
The 12th House represents the summation of Life, the synthesis of all the other variables in the Natal Chart, everything so deeply merged and mingled that Neptune has the reputation of being 'confusing' or 'dissolving reality' -- Neptune transits are called 'disorienting.'
Pisces/Neptune/12th House synthesizes everything into one thing, dissolving the borders between different things, for example Husband and Wife becoming One. Marriage is the perfect symbol of 12th House. Truly, to be "married" means you must "undo" yourself to incorporate the Other within your notion of Self.
Why is Neptune 'disorienting?'
Because, given our Hellenistic heritage, we 'orient' ourselves in Material Reality by separating off the Spiritual and isolating it as if it were something "other" than Material.
The joke the Rabbi told SHOWS without TELLING that Spiritual and Material are not, in fact, two DIFFERENT things.
Spiritual and Material appear to be incompatible opposites -- just like the nitty-gritty, separate detail orientation of Virgo/Mercury is conceptualized in our culture as "opposite" Pisces/Neptune and its Inclusive Big Picture, everything smearing into one idealistic cloud, portrait of Reality. Neptune obscures details while Mercury separates them and gives them sparkling-hard-edges.
As you read on here below, always keep in mind that Neptune, the Ruler of the 12th House, is the single most definitive significator of Romance in general, and the Soul Mate (and Happily Ever After ending) in particular. NEPTUNE is the ruling planet of this blog. It's all about Romance stories.
Astrologically, Virgo, ruled by Mercury, is the 6th House which represents both what you do to earn a living (your job as distinct from your Career) and your Health.
The connection between satisfaction and success at 'Work' (your job, what you get paid money for) and your Physical Body Health is famous in Astrological interpretations of the 6th House.
Beginners in Astrology puzzle and anguish over finding an interpretation for a 6th House transit.
Seasoned professional astrologers will nail one or the other manifestion, in body or health, with fair accuracy, mostly by ignoring the problem of what the connection is between Bodily Health and Job Performance. Modern science has pretty much "explained" that to the satisfaction of most people.
This Rabbi's joke tells us explicitly that this designation of 6th House as "Body Health" OR "Job Issues" is nonsense.
This Rabbi's joke tells us exactly how these two apparently unconnected things -- Body and Job -- are actually the self-same-identical thing.
But that connection is apparent only through the Tree of Life view of Reality -- the Biblical Description of the nature of reality as a balance, or dynamic equilibrium.
How the Tree of Life view, the graphic representation of the Biblical view of Creation, tells us the relationship between Body and Job becomes apparent only if you understand that the 12th House (Romance) is the connection between Body and Job.
Get that connection into your head, and your Romance plots will never get stale or repetitive, or derivative.
The connection between Romance, Body and Job is the answer to the question, "What is a Human Being?"
The assumption you make about the Nature of the Human Being generates all the Themes you use in worldbuilding.
Here is the index to the advanced craft posts on integration of theme, plot, character and worldbuilding.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/12/index-to-theme-plot-character.html
You can use the Helenistic definition of Human, the Roman Definition, or the Japanese, Chinese, Hindu, Native American, or many other definitions to generate dynamite Romance plots. You can adapt any of them to produce a Happily Ever After scenario if you study and internalize the mythologies of these civilizations. But there will always be readers who just won't accept that the HEA is possible in real life.
If you do study all these civilizations, and then study the Biblical view of the universe, you will find bits and pieces, a fragment here a shard over there -- traces of the Biblical view in each of these civilizations' mythologies.
The Talmud has it that God offered the Torah to all of the Nations of Earth before he got to Abraham. Each of the Nations asked some questions (typical of their cultures) before answering whether they would accept the Torah, so God just kept on searching. When he offered the deal to Abraham (then Abram), he just accepted the deal without question, packed up and went to follow God's ways, and then asked what those ways were.
This story explains why you find bits and pieces of Torah everywhere -- everyone got something for considering the offer. It also illustrates the difference between the culture that accepted Torah, the Biblical View of Reality, and those that regarded that view with suspicion. The descendants of Abraham are an oddity among humans.
But the Torah also states, boldly and loudly, that eventually all the Nations will "bow down" to God, understand that Biblical View of Reality and rejoice in that understanding. Nobody loses. Everybody wins. Reality is not structured as "either/or" or "I win means you lose." In the Biblical view of reality, "I win means everyone wins."
That is what is so odd, yet not incompatible, between the general culture's view of reality and the Biblical view of Reality. When you get a more global grasp of the Biblical View from the perspective of Torah, Tanach, Talmud, Mishnah and Gemmara, you will find that it differs markedly, stubbornly, and emphatically from all the other mythologies. It is "alien" to every other culture on this Earth, yet is reflected in those cultures, and even the basis of those cultures.
One core issue that distinguishes the Biblical View, yet appears in so many other cultures, is the matter of Body and Soul.
Some cultures say the Body must dominate: "If it feels good, it is good."
Some cultures say the Soul must dominate: "Pleasure is Evil."
Our culture currently is resoundingly rejecting Pleasure Is Evil as a theme -- and going with Pleasure Is The Ultimate Good. In Romance novels, the first order of business is monkey-sex, then comes Relationship. Sexual attraction (Body) is considered "irresistible." Body needs, physical desire, must always dominate any value the Mind (Soul) holds dear. There's no point resisting the Body because it Dominates the Soul. That's a thematic premise pervading the Romance field today.
That is, Pleasure (especially sexual pleasure) is the prime indicator by which we distinguish a Soul Mate from the background population. You have to try out a guy in bed before you marry him, or you'll make a big mistake. And the guy must be "handsome" -- or the gal "beautiful." The Body counts more than the Soul.
In other words, the modern USA culture is working this problem of "What is a human being?" by using the assumption that EITHER the Body OR the Soul must dominate.
Dominance is the only possible way to resolve a conflict, and opposites are always in conflict. That is a Theme. You see it working out in International Affairs -- as well as the current Presidential Election cycle.
In other words, in our modern cultural assumptions, Balance is not an Option, unless it is a static balance and tilted to one side or the other.
There is no way to synthesize opposites into a unified whole.
Why do Romance writers and especially science fiction romance writers who deal in the Paranormal (Neptune rules the Paranormal) Romance field need a model of "Human" at all? Why not just go with your readership's prevailing idea of what a Human is?
Well, if you just accept the prevailing assumption about the nature of Humanity, you will create a lot of read-and-toss, Airplane Read, Beach Read novels, all identical.
What distinguishes one novel from another is theme, and what distinguishes one theme from another is the distinctiveness of that theme.
In Alien Romance, if your Alien character is Human-with-pasted-on-quirks, you won't create a book or series that will be remembered and passed on to children and grandchildren as a "must-read."
The must-read classics are all novels with themes that challenge the unconscious assumptions about Reality, on such a deep subconscious level that the reader is not aware of having their notions challenged.
It's what screenwriting books like SAVE THE CAT! call "off the nose" writing. You don't call a spade, a spade. You don't name it on the nose. You don't hit the nail on the head. You come at the assumption at an oblique angle and strike a spark that lights tinder in the Soul of the reader.
To do that, you as a writer, need a number of significantly different notions of "what" a human being is.
Your human protagonist has to be able to recognize something "human" in your alien protagonist (preferably that no other human is seeing).
Your alien protagonist has to be able to see something alien in your human protagonist (preferably that no other alien is seeing.)
To pull that off, you have to understand how your target reader understands what a human being is, and you have to have a complete grasp of what other views of humanity can be understood by your reader if you can show them without telling.
As noted above, all cultures have some bit or piece of the Kabbalistic view of the human being. Astrology spans all cultural barriers and depicts mathematically and graphically what we all sense about ourselves, and how we "read" others.
Any reader looking for a Soul Mate novel with an HEA ending will be able to stipulate the existence of the Soul.
Most, however, will not be consciously aware that the resolution of the Body/Soul conflict in our culture is depicted as show-don't-tell in the work/health connection, the 6th House.
I'll give you one example of how this theory can explain the work/health connection, and from that you should be able to create new variations that could form a template for a comprehensible yet alien Alien protagonis.
Here is one way to understand the 6th House, Body/Work connection.
Here are two previous posts discussing the Soul-Time Hypothesis relevant to this quesiton about the meaning of the 6th House.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/cycles-and-seasons-margaret-carter.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/01/theme-symbolism-integration-part-4-how.html
Here's the theory of what a human is that can generate infinite numbers of sexy alien protagonists.
Think back to that joke at the top of this post.
The nature of anything lies in its initial moments. That's why Astrological Natal Charts of both human births and the "birth" of an Event -- the moment something happens -- hold usable meaning.
The starting point of a novel determines it's ending point, just as the start determines its middle. Get those 3 points wrong, and the novel not only won't sell to a big publishing house, but it will be panned by comments on Amazon if you self-publish it.
The starting point determines the middle and end.
Or the middle determines the start and end.
Or the end determines the start and middle.
Unlike Euclidean (another Helenistic Greek) Geometry where it takes 3 points to determine a line, or a triangle, "life" only needs one point.
Or at least, that's the Kabbalistic (Tarot) theory.
In other words, in the Biblical View Of The Universe, there is no such thing as "random" -- but it's not "deterministic" either. Determinism is one of the precepts of all the Ancient Greek plays that were updated by the Romans and copied by Shakespeare.
We live inside a pattern, but we have Free Will.
So any given starting point for a Life contains the potential for all sorts of middle and end points.
Free Will choice determines which of all the possible middle and end points will gain potential energy. Which of those high-potential-energy points will be actualized is negotiated with God (who is not a Bully like the Greek gods; he doesn't dictate, He negotiates personally, individually.)
That's where the immense variety of human endeavor comes from. We all contain Infinity because we were Created by the Infinite -- we are (like the Tardis) bigger inside than outside.
Here is a theory of what a child is that can be crafted into a Theme.
A child is born with specifically delineated Potential. The child has a Soul from conception, but that Soul is enormously complex and thus doesn't all "fit" inside the baby. The Soul has to "descend" as it prompts the baby's growth.
We say (also a thematic point) that when the Soul leaves the Body, the human dies.
But that idea is based on the either/or structure of reality. Perhaps the Soul isn't either-present-or-absent. Perhaps it is a gradual, step-wise, ever increasing habitation of the Body?
Kabbalah delineates Levels to the Soul - just like Atoms were first thought (by the Helenistic Greeks) to be the smallest indivisible particle of matter, but later were discovered to be composed of electrons and a nucleus, and all of those particles are composed of other sub-atomic particles, each with its own Character.
Likewise, the Biblical View of the Universe, gives us a vision of the human Soul as being composed of Levels, all very intricate and complex.
A baby has a Soul connected, but not fully descended. At various ages, on the birthday (by the Hebrew calendar) the Soul descends a little more.
This explains how and why children at different ages have increasing capacity for self-control, self-discipline, comprehension of the abstract, etc. The stages of human development show us what to teach at different ages.
Children learn by doing. Thus, at each age, additional activities are added to the daily regimen, and additional responsibilities are added until at age 12 or 13 the child is fully responsible for the consequences of her/his actions.
Real learning is always non-verbal. The deeds carve and shape our view of the universe.
With deeds, we learn the words that correspond to those deeds. Charity. Justice. Compassion.
None of those words means anything without the previous practice of the deed: "Don't hit your little sister!" "Johnny, you must share that toy even though it is yours."
So as a child becomes an Adult (sexual maturity is a big part of that), the Soul descends and gains a firmer grip on the Body.
Throughout the rest of the life, there are milestone birthdays (70 and 80, 90 and 100, being major significators) that delineate a firmer and then weakening grip of the Soul on the Body.
For most of the productive (working at a 6th House job) life, the Soul fits into the Body like a hand fits into a glove.
The Soul wears the Body, and like the hand wearing a glove, stretches and shapes the Body into a replica (an opposite, like a plaster cast you pour molten metal into to make a 3-D object) of the Soul.
We now know that you can have many genes that are not "turned on" or "expressed" -- and that the experiences of Life can switch genes on or off. You are not your genes. You are not pre-destined (a Helenistic concept incompatible with the Biblical View of the Universe) by your genes.
You are what your Soul can make of you. That can be infinite possibilities in infinite combinations.
Or maybe you are what "you" make of your Soul.
In the Helenistic view of the universe, the question would be, "Well, WHICH is it -- the Soul that makes the Body or the Body that makes the Soul?"
In the Biblical view of the universe, that question is utter nonsense.
See how you can use various views of the universe in various human cultures to depict truly Alien aliens who can be Soul Mates to a human?
An Alien who has never heard of the either/or zero-sum-game view of the universe would be sorely puzzled by the very question "which is it?" The question itself is nonsense.
In the Biblical view of the universe, Body and Soul are really the same thing (Neptune synthesizes).
Remember the Rabbi-joke? "You can't use that dirt. You have to Create your human from scratch as I did."
That's MY dirt. I created that dirt.
What dirt is that? It's the "dirt" or "clay" from which our bodies are "molded."
Just as that clay was Created specifically to be the body of a particular individual human, so too was the Soul that will wear that Body Created. They are a pair, synthesized, made one, Neptune style.
We know, today, that our Body is a few pounds of carbon, minerals, etc. (dirt) and a whole lot of Water.
We don't know yet what our Soul is, or is made of, other than it is the breath God blew into Adam's nostrils.
In a previous post, I pointed out the Soul-Time-Hypothesis that I think explains a lot about why "science" can't peg the Soul and prove it exists.
Theory: the Soul enters manifestation through the dimension of Time.
The Soul has no material dimensions -- no height, width, breadth, mass, weight, not even "energy" as in electrons or magnetic fields. That's why modern science can't even find it, nevermind measure it -- all our instruments are made of matter.
The Soul doesn't inhabit the Body or Possess the Body.
The Soul is not the Body, but it is not an "either/or" relationship.
The Body and the Soul are both created by God, designed for each other, just like in the joke. "That's My dirt! Make your own."
Now, back to the 6th House.
Theory: suppose the Soul is given a free will choice before conception.
Astrology assigns the meaning of the MC, the 10th House Cusp, to the Purpose of this Life. Natural 10th House is Capricorn, the Manager, and is ruled by Saturn. While that 10th House cusp can be in any sign, depending on where and when you are born (when your Life begins), it adds attributes of Capricorn and Saturn to your personal 10th House cusp.
Science shows how hormones trigger birth, and the trigger starts in the fetus. The fetus's Nature determines the moment of birth.
So suppose the Soul chooses the Parents and the moment of Birth to make the "purpose" of this life.
The Soul takes on a Life to realize the potential encoded into the 10th House cusp.
That sign/ruler combination chosen by the Soul is inflected by Capricorn and Saturn (Management and Discipline).
Saturn is often regarded as "purpose" or "ambition."
You are born with an ambition to realize your potential for completing a certain job, a purpose in life, a career. By Noel Tyl's theory, the Moon position by sign, ruler and House represents your driving need, and Saturn organizes the world around you to fulfill that need.
But to do that, you need to make money, have a job, 6th House.
Another interpretation of the Natural 6th House, Virgo, is "service."
Virgos make great secretaries, accountants, detail oriented people. Unless they have a Big Picture attribute highlighted elsewhere in their Natal Chart, they tend toward project-oriented professions. They make great health-care professionals, treating each patient as a project.
But there's nothing shallow about Virgo. They aren't subservient by nature.
The 6th House is put to the service of the 10th -- the ambition, the Purpose Of This Life is served by whatever you do for a living, as a job. Your career is the purpose of your life, your job is a means to walk the paths of that career.
It is often said the key to real happiness (as in Happily Ever After) is to Serve.
THEORY: If your 6th House (job) is serving the Purpose of Your Life, your Body (6th house) will be healthy.
In other words, your Soul took God's job-offer to be You and do Whatever Job He Had That Needed Doing. As long as you are doing the job you were hired by God to do, you will be healthy enough to do it.
You might not be "healthy" by general human standards. You might be what is termed crippled or disabled. You might be melting down with autoimune disease. You might be missing limbs. You might have impaired senses. If you are doing the job you were hired to do, then you will be healthy enough to do it.
Sometimes the job is to be sick, dependent, impaired.
Sometimes the job is to be hale, healthy, strong, and the person upon whom the lame and weak depend. Sometimes the job is to support the weak. Sometimes the job is to be weak so that the Strong can do their job.
It's all 6th House. Service equals Health.
The 12th House, the opposite to the 6th, is about the transcendent Soul, the summation of the Life, what it all means. Neptune is idealism, a transcendent vision through the Soul's eyes, not the eyes of the Body.
There are a lot of insights into the meaning of the 12th House, Pisces ruled by Neptune (which rules Romance, as I keep reminding you).
The 12th is "reflected" into the 6th House.
Here's a story that illustrates (show don't tell) how this 6/12 axis of the Natal Chart works.
We can regard God as the artist who is Creating one-of-a-kind original artwork, each one a human being (or maybe an Alien Soul Mate for a human being).
All of the crafts our artisans practice express a way that the Divine Creates us.
One of those crafts is the silversmith.
If you research on YouTube you might find a video showing how to smelt silver where the silversmith gives tells the student how to determine when all the dross, or impurities, have been burned out of the silver -- leaving only pure silver. How do you know when to stop smelting?
The clue the silversmith looks for is the reflection of his/her own face in the melted puddle of silver.
When purified, silver becomes a mirror, reflecting the smith's visage back at him/her.
The metaphore for why God smelts us in the fires of Life, gives us all this hardship, obstacles, difficulties, sorrows and grief, is that he's purifying us as silver is purified. And he'll know we're finished, we're pure, when he sees Himself in us.
The Biblical description of God has long lists of attributes shown to us over the ages - for example, there are 13 Attributes of Mercy (and that's just one thing, Mercy). Other Attributes likewise have parts.
When you reflect those attributes, He'll stop heating you in His fire.
Any Romance writer trying to create an Alien Love Interest, a non-human Soul Mate for a human, can use one or a few of these attributes to establish the essential humanity of the non-human regardless of the non-human's biology, form or figure.
Here are the 13 Attributes according to My Jewish Learning.
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-13-attributes-of-mercy/2/
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– The Lord! (Adonai)–God is merciful before a person sins! Even though aware that future evil lies dormant within him.
– The Lord! (Adonai)–God is merciful after the sinner has gone astray.
– God (El)–a name that denotes power as ruler over nature and humankind, indicating that God’s mercy sometimes surpasses even the degree indicated by this name.
– Compassionate (rahum)–God is filled with loving sympathy for human frailty does not put people into situations of extreme temptation, and eases the punishment of the guilty.
– Gracious (v’hanun)–God shows mercy even to those who do not deserve it consoling the afflicted and raising up the oppressed.
– Slow to anger (ereh apayim)–God gives the sinner ample time to reflect, improve, and repent.
– Abundant in Kindness (v’rav hesed)–God is kind toward those who lack personal merits, providing more gifts and blessings than they deserve; if one’s personal behavior is evenly balanced between virtue and sin, God tips the scales of justice toward the good.
– Truth (v’emet)–God never reneges on His word to reward those who serve Him.
– Preserver of kindness for thousands of generations (notzeir hesed la-alafim)–God remembers the deeds of the righteous for thebenefit of their less virtuous generations of offspring (thus we constantly invoke the merit of the Patriarchs).
– Forgiver of iniquity (nosei avon)–God forgives intentional sin resulting from an evil disposition, as long as the sinner repents.
– Forgiver of willful sin (pesha)–God allows even those who commit a sin with the malicious intent of rebelling against and angering Him the opportunity to repent.
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It doesn't matter what religion you espouse, or even if you're an Atheist or Agnostic, you recognize these behaviors as desireable and a signature of the Lovability of a person (human or not). So most of your target audience will respond to a show-don't-tell illustration that your Alien character just naturally (without thought or consideration, without hesitation) exhibits one or another of these attributes.
And the reverse is true -- the Alien protagonist will recognize the Alien-Within your human protagonist when one or a combination of these traits comes to the fore in the plot.
Notice the phrase above: "as long as the sinner repents."
You may be surprised how fast the "repents" scene, the confession scene, the tell-the-truth scene, establishes rapport between the Character and your Target Reader, even if the Character is Alien.
The Target Reader is selected by what is repented, to whom, and why (maybe also when in the narrative arc confession and repentance take place). Different readers will applaud a Character's choices of when to fess up to what, and why fessing up is necessary (or not necessary).
Think about the TV Series
I Love Lucy -- every episode with a very funny confession scene.
The Values (2nd House) of your Confessing Character are shown-not-told by that choice of when and to what to confess.
In the 3rd book in the Romantic Times Award winning Dushau Trilogy, I hinted at an Alien's contemplation of condemnation by his father and grandfather when he finally would get home and confess.
His trepidation at confronting his family showed a similarity to human values -- even though he is so definitely not human that his wrong-doing does not seem wrong to a human.
http://www.amazon.com/Outreach-Dushau-Trilogy-Book-3-ebook/dp/B002S525DK
Those 13 Attributes of Mercy embody the essence of what it is to be Human, a Soul wearing a Body that fits like a glove, a work-glove designed for a specific task which the Soul is dead-set on completing come Hell or High Water (10th House Purpose In Life) using that Body (6th House) to do the Job (6th House).
When fully integrated (purified) into that task, the Soul shines through the custom-Created Body and attracts the Soul Mate. It is the Soul that is "mated" -- not the Body. So you can easily depict a Human/Alien Romance.
Romance (Neptune/ 12th House) blossoms, Love At First Sight happens, and Health-Job-Service and everything Virgo manifests as the Virtue of Virgo rather than the Vice.
Every astrological sign can manifest as its best virtue or its worst vice, and it could be that whether virtue or vice is apparent depends on how much of the Soul has infused the Body.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com
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