Astrology is such a wonderful tool for Parents

This article was written by Nicole Thompson, author of Star Sign Stories For Every Child: Astrology is an often overlooked but invaluable tool that parents may use to assist them in navigating the sometimes tricky path of parenting.

A full natal chart read by a skilled and intuitive astrologer or even a very well-written a downloadable report on your child’s chart will reveal the intricacies of your child’s personality.

Yet just knowing your child’s Sun sign and becoming familiar with the positive and negative aspects is also a start on the path to knowing and relating to your child in a deeper way. As a parent our role is to help our children grow by working with their innate tendencies rather than trying to force change.

ARIES

An impulsive and impatient Aries thrives on praise and needs to know that they are always special. When your love is solid an Aries child is able to learn the important lesson of trust. Order your Child Gifts Profile here.

TAURUS

The quiet and placid Taurus child must never be forced. Common sense, physical affection and a calm voice will instead move mountains, and by showing forgiveness to all and sundry you help them to learn to let go of resentment. Order your Child Gifts Profile here.

GEMINI

Gemini children need freedom in order to satisfy their inquisitive and imaginative natures. With their changeable, alert minds it is often difficult for them to enter the realm of feelings and so expressing empathy for others and discussing feelings will assist the Gemini child to learn the all important lesson of emotional intelligence. Order your Child Gifts Profile here.

CANCER

Extremely sensitive and moody, these children especially need nurturing home environments. Through providing a constant source of stability and empathy you will help them to release their fears and develop a measure of security in the world. Order your Child Gifts Profile here.

LEO

A Leo child needs to fulfil their innate tendency to lead and require plenty of attention. In order that their greatest lesson of humility is learned they need constant love and gentle discipline in equal measures.

VIRGO

Whilst Virgo’s are renowned for their tendency to criticise it is important not to do the same to your Virgo child. They worry about their own imperfections and require consistent affection in order to offer assurance, but more importantly to teach them the important quality of human connection. Order your Child Gifts Profile here.

LIBRA

Libran children must never be rushed into making a decision, instead offer gentle encouragement and possible solutions to help them overcome one of their greatest obstacles. Bringing balance into all that you do assists your Libran child to find the harmony that they seek. Order your Child Gifts Profile here.

SCORPIO

A Scorpio child has an intense nature and a paramount need for privacy. They possess keen insight and seek the truth in which case they will only show respect for someone who stands by their convictions and exhibits true wisdom. Through this they are encouraged to choose a nobler path and surrender any form of resentment toward others. Order your Child Gifts Profile here.

SAGITTARIUS

Fairness, honesty and logic make their mark on the curious Sagittarian child. As a seeker of freedom they will learn the lesson of loyalty if you relax the rules and never lose faith in them. Order your Child Gifts Profile here.

CAPRICORN

These dutiful, practical, quiet children enjoy routine and order, and a parent who role models concern and empathy for others may teach their little goat not to step on anyone whilst making their way to the top. Order your Child Gifts Profile here.

AQUARIUS

Aquarian children thrive in harmonious environments and it is important for them to learn to concentrate and to maintain an order within their thought processes. They are naturally unpredictable, rebellious and detached, all of which must be met with genuine love and connection enabling them to foster this within themselves. Order your Child Gifts Profile here.

PISCES

The gentle Pisces child is a daydreamer who shuns routine and any negative discord. Their greatest obstacle is to overcome their natural tendency to swim away from problems. Help them to find the courage to face problems by seeking creative solutions. Order your Child Gifts Profile here.

So Taurean David Beckham has announced he is retiring from football after many years at the top. Perfect timing, Becks!

David Beckham is a Taurean with a Void of Course Capricorn Moon and Taurus Rising. Click here to see his chart.

So is there an ending in his chart signalling this big decision?

There most certainly is.

For one thing, like all Taureans, David has Very Final Saturn opposite his sign, suggesting one part of his life is ending so another can begin.

As a Taurean with Taurus Rising, he has also had the recent eclipses all over his chart. And regular readers will know that when eclipses strike, one door always closes so another can open.

Perfect timing

David Beckham has always had immaculate timing on and off the field. His decision to retire now is perfectly timed, especially with his progressed New Moon due to take place later this year.

David probably knows nothing about astrology but he is one of those people who is tuned into the cosmos. Like all good Taureans, he knows when to stop!

If you would like to know more about your chart, I can’t recommend our Chart Shop highly enough. Whether you want to know about your love life, your future forecasts or you have a career question, we have amazing reports for you to download instantly.

A few years ago I did a course with the amazing Doreen Virtue. At the end of it, we had to take some notes from our Inner Self and one of my messages was “stand up for what you believe in”.

One thing I really believe in is eradicating as much rubbish from our lives and the lives of our families. So here follows a totaly non-astrological article I have wantonly picked up from Dr Mercola – he’s a good guy and I am pretty sure he won’t mind. You can read the rest of this excellent article here.

Organic Life: What Can You do to Reduce Unnecessary Chemical Exposure to Your Family?

Rather than compile an endless list of what you should avoid, it’s far easier to focus on what you should do to lead a healthy lifestyle with as minimal a chemical exposure as possible:

As much as possible, buy and eat organic produce and free-range, organic foods to reduce your exposure to pesticides and fertilizers.

Rather than eating conventional or farm-raised fish, which are often heavily contaminated with PCBs and mercury, supplement with a high-quality purified krill oil, or eat fish that is wild-caught and lab tested for purity.

Eat mostly raw, fresh foods, steering clear of processed, prepackaged foods of all kinds. This way you automatically avoid artificial food additives, including dangerous artificial sweeteners, food coloring and MSG.

Store your food and beverages in glass rather than plastic, and avoid using plastic wrap and canned foods (which are often lined with BPA-containing liners).

Have your tap water tested and, if contaminants are found, install an appropriate water filter on all your faucets (even those in your shower or bath).

Only use natural cleaning products in your home.

Switch over to natural brands of toiletries such as shampoo, toothpaste, antiperspirants and cosmetics. The Environmental Working Group has a great database to help you find personal care products that are free of phthalates and other potentially dangerous chemicals. I also offer one of the highest quality organic skin care lines, shampoo and conditioner, and body butter that are completely natural and safe.

Avoid using artificial air fresheners, dryer sheets, fabric softeners or other synthetic fragrances.

Replace your Teflon pots and pans with ceramic or glass cookware or a safe nonstick pan.

When redoing your home, look for “green,” toxin-free alternatives in lieu of regular paint and vinyl floor coverings.

Replace your vinyl shower curtain with one made of fabric, or install a glass shower door. Most all flexible plastics, like shower curtains, contain dangerous plasticizers like phthalates.

Limit your use of drugs (prescription and over-the-counter) as much as possible. Drugs are chemicals too, and they will leave residues and accumulate in your body over time.

Avoid spraying pesticides around your home or insect repellants that contain DEET on your body. There are safe, effective and natural alternatives out there. Click here to read the rest of this article.

We love Ricky Martin – but why?!?!

There is most definitely something about Ricky Martin. Since he burst on to our screens on The Voice, Australians have been going mad for him.

But what is it about him that makes him so endearing? A quick look at his chart reveals that it might now be what you expect! Moreover, we might all have something to learn from him.

Ricky is one of the few celebs we actually have a time of birth for. He’s a Star sign Capricorn (hard working) with Gemini Rising (chatty) and a Pisces Moon (perfect for music).

HAPPY JUPITER
And his dominant planet? Jupiter, of course, the happiest, friendliest and most generous of planets who wants the whole world to be loved and to love back. It’s also the lucky planet and there is no doubt that Ricky clearly has been blessed by Lady Luck. One interesting thing to note is that Ricky’s Moon is Void of Course, proving once again that it’s no hindrance to great success!

UNCONVENTIONAL URANUS
Also fun to note is that he has the planet of the unconventional, Uranus, on his 5th House cusp, the part of his chart that talks about how and if he will have kids. In his case, he will have kids unconventionally and we all know he used a surrogate Mum to produce his beloved offspring.

AND THE CLINCHER?
And does any of this explain why we love him? Maybe not. For that we have to look to his Venus in Aquarius in his 8th House. That’s about someone who loves without clinging, who is not scared of the taboo, who is his own person. We love him because he dares to be himself. And his unaspected chart ruler Mercury. That’s about the maverick who marches to the beat of his own drum. Again, we love him because he dares to be himself.

It’s a lesson for us all!

An addendum – a Facebook friend read this and wrote to me: Yasmin I am a huge fan of yours but I think you are a tad off the mark with this article. How can you possibly say his success and popularity is down to the fact that he has always been himself? He spent most of his life hiding his true identity, denying his sexuality!

For me, I saw it differently. I saw it that he actually had the courage to come out. So many don’t. He has done. And it’s not like he is at the end of his career and revealing his true self was a last resort. He did it while his star is still rising. Props to him.

I should also add that I wasn’t just referring to his sexuality in my comment that he had the courage to be himself. I also meant that looking at his chart, I see someone who is brave about who he really is and that is appealing to us.

Also on Facebook, I asked astrologer Ed Tamplin if he would chime in on the question of why Ricky is such a good match for Australia – Ed is a master of serious Australian astrological matters! He generously replied:

“As you know I use the January 26 1788 5.23 am chart for Australia, because the 1901 chart omits half our history. That puts Ricky’s Aquarian Venus/Nodes on the Ozzie Sun and Ascendant. Venus is song and dance – but also popularity, and his Venus trine Pluto energizes this even more.” Thanks Ed, that’s a very big connection. You can visit Ed’s site here.

Wondering what’s going on in your chart? Give me your time, date and place of birth and I’ll send you our Soul Profile report. Just click here.

There’s no better time than eclipse season to clear your clutter!

Ask anyone who’s ever had their space cleared – or cleared it themselves – and they’ll probably look at you wide-eyed and tell you about the most amazing things which happened next: contracts they’d been waiting for came through, they made up with their mum after three years of not talking, they finally quit their job to follow their heart’s desire and so on. Clear your clutter, change your life!

In my case, I moved continents.

Fifteen Green Garbage Bags: A Personal Story

I’d been living for seven glorious years in London when space clearer par excellence Karen Kingston came round to feng my house. I was working in the UK TV industry at the time, and they wanted me to do six 5-minute ‘docos’ on feng shui, so Karen and I used my house as our example for the cameras.

At the time I didn’t make the connection, but about six weeks after she came around ringing her bells, burning her incense and advising me about where to put my mirrors, I threw out fifteen – that’s fifteen – green garbage bags full of clutter in one weekend clear-out. Three months after the clearing, I decided that England was lovely but it was time to revisit my homeland and move back to Oz. Which I did.

Looking back, I have a funny feeling those events were related. I can’t put my finger on why but it all makes sense. Perhaps without my dreaded clutter, which had made me the laughing stock of my friends, I was literally ‘free to move’.

Do you need to clear your clutter?

WHAT TO DO
Throw out your junk. Get rid of it. Give it away, give it to the Salvos or St Vinnies, have a garage sale or dump it in the bin. Free yourself. It’s so hard yet so easy. Once you start, you can’t stop. But you have to start. It’s like unlocking a door. Just do it.

There’s no place to hide. So don’t forget to clear:

* under your bed
* your hall cupboard
* the ‘spare’ room
* the junk room
* the garage
* the workshop
* the boxes you’re always promising to sort through
* the filing cabinets
* your PC’s outdated files
* your car
* the laundry
* your old magazine pile – if you don’t read it, bin it or recycle it

and so on …

Take delight in your accomplisment, once you’ve cleared the rubbish! This was an excerpt from my book Cosmic Love. Click here to buy the book!

This article is an excerpt from a much longer post titled JESSICA WATSON, young Medusa and Venus with the Moon. It was written by Paola Emma and first published published on Paola’s excellent site http://livingmoonastrology.com/.

Jessica Watson is of course the young Australian girl who recently became the youngest person ever to sail solo around the world.

I am excerpting it here as it contains fascinating thoughts for anyone interested in the Fixed Star Algol.

…To conclude this astrological portrait of Jessica Watson, I like to point out the fact that the Sun in Taurus in her Birth Chart was conjunct in longitude to Algol, the binary star, alpha of Perseus. This Star was depicted by the ancient Greek sea travelers as the severed head of the monster-woman Medusa, in the hand of her slayer, the Solar Hero Perseus. Now this is a star that has very much interested me and about which I talked at length in some of my previous posts, mainly in reference to natural and man-made disasters. We cannot deny here that traditionally this star hasn’t received the best press, but has been considered rather dangerous, being held responsible for creating mayhem and generating violence. Fixed Stars’ interpretations from ancient sources paint many of them in very dark colours, identifying them as cause of much pain and suffering for human kind.

We’ve got to remember however that also other astrological factors were in the past considered wholly negative and irredeemable. Squares or Oppositions from Mars or Saturn, for instance, were certain harbingers of doom and gloom. In our modern times we have gained a more rounded knowledge of everything astrological, so that to us present-time seekers a square from Saturn or a conjunction with Algol may still be seen as difficult, but are also viewed as opportunities for great experiences and for growth of spiritual awareness.

All Stars are living lights, therefore symbols of spirit: the light we receive from them coming not only from the depth of space but the depth of time as well, a chain in the endless circle of life, past, present and future. How a Star can be evil?

Medusa (Algol) is for us modern people a symbol of the way female power was perceived in the patriarchal societies from which our own western culture stemmed. The Goddess of the Neolithic, having lost her power to the patriarchal male Gods brought by conquering tribes in search of new lands and resources, was in a few centuries transformed from a life-giving Mother into a Goddess of Death and Malice. Women’s power to generate and nurture life was more and more vilified and made inferior to the loftier Gods who resided in the sky, far away from human concerns. It didn’t take very long to create the terrible gulf between Nature and Spirit that still divides our modern psyche. Medusa with all her terrible attributes needed to be killed by the male hero, but her legacy of power survived in historically more recent versions of the Goddess, like in Pallas Athena, daughter of Jupiter, who used to carry with her a shield over which she had placed the powerful head of Medusa, to help her in her war against injustice.

In modern times Medusa is again changing. Now we tend to view her as the embodiment of feminine power, not wicked, but creative and passionate. In my post on the Haiti Earthquake I wrote: “Algol-Medusa is a power Star and one that many can indeed wear as a badge of honour and charisma, and not a mark of doom or a sign of wickedness. It is described by modern astrologers Bernadette Brady and Diana Rosenberg as: feminine wisdom, creative power, consuming passion, intense sexuality; confrontation and then assimilation of the dark side of life and human nature.”

This post was written by Paola Emma and first published on her excellent site livingmoonastrology.com. You can real the entire article here.

Here’s a thought for you as we move towards the next round of eclipses. Try to TRUST the Universe.

I regularly go to an ashram in India where the motto is always “Surrender”. That’s not such a different idea to the idea of TRUSTING. If you can’t do surrender, perhaps you can do trust? And if you can’t do trust, perhaps you can do surrender?

And what is surrender?

I read a wonderful Tweet by Marianne Williamson the other day which said: “Surrendering a thing to spirit means surrendering our thoughts about it. We’re surrendering our thoughts to a process of divine alignment.”

As you night know, Marianne is very well versed and immersed in the A Course In Miracles material and this comment vibrates with the ACIM sentiment.

I am only now reading this amazing work, but I gather so far that a lot of it is about understanding that when our thoughts don’t feel good, they are out of whack. Our job is to realise that and allow Spirit to get them back on track (and back in whack?!)

So think about what you’re excited about and be happy that you’re on track. Think about what you want to do or start and stay mentally positive about it as the eclipse approaches. And then trust that all will be well. Trust the Universe. Also, surrender. Surrender to the idea that sometimes the Universe has better ideas than us.

Whenever I write things like this, I am mindful that there will be some people reading it going through very dark times. If you fall into that category and can possibly accept that somehow, sometime, something good will come out of where you are now, you are doing a great job.

Have a lovely day.

If you’re curious about your love life and you have someone special in mind, click here to try out our free Soul Mates Snapshot sample.

If you’re looking for a cosmic message, this is it for today:

Dalai Lama XIV > Quotes > Quotable Quote

“NEVER GIVE UP
No matter what is going on
Never give up
Develop the heart
Too much energy in your country
Is spent developing the mind
Instead of the heart
Be compassionate
Not just to your friends
But to everyone
Be compassionate
Work for peace
In your heart and in the world
Work for peace
And I say again
Never give up
No matter what is going on around you
Never give up”

― Dalai Lama XIV

If you would like to find out more about your strengths, try our FREE Horoscope Essentials chart. Just click here.