Article

Cet article de Juliette Allais est paru dans le magazine « The astrological journal », en Juin 2006,
sous le titre :
Astrology and Psycho-genealogy

The meaning of life … We astrologers, psychologists, philosophers and hopefully every living person on earth are in search of this (even if it is more obvious for some of us than others). The very fact of being human implies that one has to become aware of the dynamics underlying one’s actions, behaviour, and relationship with oneself and the outside world. The astrological language, with its references to mythic figures and its link to the archetypal realm is a wonderful tool to find our way through the complexity of life, and to get a hint on what we are here for. However, this process of self-unfoldment can be significantly enriched if we place it within a larger framework: the one of family dynamics.

Of course, we are all unique individuals, with a chart of our own, and finding a way to actualize this uniqueness is the very motive of our quest. However, we cannot escape the fact that we are also part of a larger system; therefore, what our ancestors have been living (and what they have been failing to achieve) is still alive somewhere within us. The moment we are conceived is the very beginning of our lives in material reality. But as soon as we enter this existence, we are carrying in our cells the whole of the family past, with a story that has started long before us. This particular approach owes a lot to Jung and the notion of the collective unconscious, but as Liz Greene suggests in her work, it is already present in Greek myth, where archetypal deities, when ignored or offended, are prone to retaliate on the culprit’s descendants. Thus, someone has to pay the price for this transgression, which has to be confronted by the following generations, even if they are not “guilty” themselves.

In France, there is a branch of psychology now developing into a very specialised analytical process about family dynamics, called psycho-genealogy. How is the story of our ancestors still imperceptibly influencing our choices, our behaviours, our destinies? It is obvious to us that we inherit a series of genetic, physical characteristics. However something else is also being transmitted, in an invisible and mysterious way: identical dates of birth, names, situations or events which repeat themselves from one generation to another, at a similar age, and sometimes without the protagonists knowing anything about it!

Scenes of the past are being played-out again, even in the smallest detail, and in a most bewildering way. So, we need to understand how the past, which is, by definition, irrevocably over, can come back into our lives, with such precision. Also, how it enacts itself through people who seem to be merely lending their lives and bodies to the experience. First, we need to remember that, from the time the child is born until the age of three, he is duplicating the unconscious structures of both his parents. He is also absorbing a great number of images and memories which are not entirely his own, but will become part of his psychological make-up from the moment that he is conceived.

Starting from this hypothesis, a lot of questions can be raised: if we are not the only ones to run the show, who else is? whom do we really obey; who is choosing in our place, to whom are we trying to be loyal? For those who are familiar with astrology, there is a whole area of research opening itself. We can immediately think of the houses connected to family inheritance: Fourth, Eighth and Twelfth. Is the problem linked to traumas which have never been spoken? (will we find Pluto or the 8th house important in the chart?). Is it about denial of the feminine? Can we imagine something significant happening with Venus / Saturn / Chiron, or Moon / Uranus etc. in the women’s charts? How about success, money and sexual issues, professional failures, missed vocations, unhappy marriages?

What are we carrying? The charts of the family members will be very helpful in defining very precisely the nature of the unresolved issues. Spotting the repetition of signs, aspects and houses from one generation to the next is a fascinating process, which also requires some sort of methodological approach. Otherwise, we could easily get lost with the volume of information, without being able to sort it out and find our way through it to some meaningful pattern.

How does all this work? Why should suffering and wounding repeat themselves, unless this is the only way that they can convey their particular message? It is good to remember that anything can cause a trauma, but the damage seems to come essentially from an absence of words. It is not the event itself which causes suffering, but the fact that it has not been integrated into the family psyche, as an element of the story like everything else. It is put aside, as if this can help to make it disappear. Thus, the losses, sudden deaths, rapes, exiles, bankruptcies etc. are kept secret and will remain so, until someone brings them into light. Examples may be a stellium in the Fourth House including Pluto, or Chiron conjunct Neptune in the Eighth.

Coming to terms with our family inheritance doesn’t mean we have to go through the same painful events, but that we need to somehow incorporate these memories in our lives, in the form of a healing process. Writing, painting, and anything that has to do with inner or outer transformation of the past will be helpful and appropriate. Thus, all of this is about how we accept the past and do something with it; just as in our personal life, we cannot be someone else and put pieces of ourself away, to avoid discomfort, shame or guilt.

Talking about shame, guilt, and what cannot be made one’s own, brings us to Saturn and Chiron issues. It is very interesting to study the placement of these two planets through the whole series of charts in the family. We need to spot where and in which areas of life these people have felt inferior and inadequate. Imagine a Chiron-Venus aspect transmitted from mother to daughter: Where has it started? Is there an event which we can actually relate to the aspect? What do you do when you are at the end of the line, and you become aware that being a woman has always been associated with shame, and catastrophe? Is there any way to change this, when you actually know about it? This raises many questions, and psychotherapy may be necessary to heal long time wounds, or resolve some particularly difficult issues appearing during the process.

Among the other clues that astrology can give us, we have one of the most important ones: under what transit to their parent’s chart are the children born? Personally, I came into the world with the dark costume of Saturn (in Capricorn) on my shoulders, since it was opposing both my mother’s Sun-Pluto conjunction, and my father’s Venus, Mars and Pluto. I can imagine how fun it must have been for them to see me coming along! In a case such as this, it is very helpful to know that the child is born to incarnate and personify the law, nothing less; the required task being to remind the world around him or her that limits are sacred and have to be honoured.

For a child with such a strong Saturn, the Law is divine. He certainly is going to fight for it with great tenacity; exacerbating his parent’s frustrations and making them painfully aware of their incapacity to assume their parental functions. So, in this case, it will be interesting to spot Saturnian issues dating back to the great-grand parents’ generation, and see how everyone manifested this archetype. This exploration will help us to understand how the principle of incarnation itself has been integrated or ignored within the family psyche, and how people actually came to terms with reality, limits and structure. Any failure of that principle will be prone to cause misplacements, transgressions, chaos and confusion.

The task of the psycho-genealogist will be to help the client rebuild a symbolic family structure within, so as to enable him to function safely in his genealogical place, without losing himself, and free of any emotional entanglements. This can be done by finding where and how there were “good enough” family bonds, images, resources etc. to survive. Even if things were far from perfect, there has always been, somehow, somewhere, something sustaining enough to at least help build an inner structure of some kind.

In most cases, it will also be necessary to examine carefully which energies have been neglected for the benefit of a particular value system, or archetype, which has become almost totalitarian. In a Martial family, whoever fails to be strong and assertive might feel left out as if he didn’t belong. If it is Neptune, suffering and sacrifice will be required, at the detriment of self realization. Or we might find people caught in the everlasting Jupiter / Saturn conflict (eternal youth and expansion versus the principle of reality). In this scenario, the family members are divided into the responsible Saturnian ones and the excluded, unreliable, unfaithful, untrustworthy ones, who side with Jupiter (or vice versa). Scapegoating being the ultimate consequence of this black-and-white world view.

During this process, a great deal of discrimination is required to see where we are still trapped in the family myths, enacting negative beliefs of various kinds, (husbands are useless / alcoholic / homosexual / violent, wives are hysterical / martyrs / abandon their children etc.). We really have to begin to question all of this, and it takes a lot of courage, and sometimes audacity to shake ourselves away from loyalties that have been going on for a long time. Clearly, some signs and planets find it easier than others: we can assume that someone with a strong Uranus, or a stellium in Aries or Leo will have a stronger impetus to do so than a gentle Pisces, or Cancer with Neptune rising. But in the end, each one of us has to find his way to stand for his own values and extract himself from the family matrix. The only way is to acknowledge the past as it is, without denial, rejection or negative judgment.

The astrologer can use the chart to enhance the capacity of the individual to leave behind the position of the victim, and little by little, take on board anything that can help him to stand firmly on his feet. The Sun and the personal planets play a great part here, because they help us to chose our own values (Venus), to fight for what we desire (Mars) and stop identifying to anything that drives us away from the core of our individuality (Sun and aspects to the Sun). Thus, we may arrive at an incarnate actualization of who we really are, in the present. From my perspective, the relationship with the body, via the Moon and the issues around earth houses and the sensation function, via earth signs, need to be thoroughly analysed and developed, so that the individual can begin to inhabit this realm, and find security and pleasure, both physically and psychologically.

To conclude: our place in the family history is unique. We can either spend our whole life repeating patterns of misfortune, or we can chose to make our lives as close to our dreams as possible. Every day, we can transform our relationship to the past, into something sustaining. We can leave behind old value systems, find new combinations of our two lineages, build a significant and creative bond between Sun and Moon, masculine and feminine principles within, being as true to ourselves as we can; both unique and universal.