1. Introduction.
I do not believe in astrology as a system for predicting daily or weekly happenings in a person’s life from their birth sign. However, the scheme of the 12 signs of the zodiac is useful for ordering certain patterns in a person’s life stages, and the character sketches that go with each sign also have usefulness. This is not meant, on my part, to give any credibility to the influence of stars over our destinies. After all, the constellations with their mythological names are only symbols created by the human imagination, not groups of stars that are in actual proximity out in space; only from our vantage point on our observation platform on the Earth do they even appear to form groups. And the groups to me don’t even look like the Ram or the Bull or the Lion.
I have the same attitude to my use of the images on the Major Arcana of the Tarot cards, and the Chakras along the axis of the human body. I disavow any belief in their supernatural qualities at least until shown otherwise. But I found them great as ordering principles in personal development over time. I begin to suspect that the framers of these occult systems may have had a hidden purpose in conceiving these schemes; that they were really teaching lessons in ethics and psychology to those truly initiated, beyond the stage of superstitious manipulations.
Alongside of these tools, which some people may find questionable, I use some more “scientific” schemes, such as Erikson’s stages of emotional development, Maslow’s hierarchy of values, as well as the insights from several religious traditions and my own experience with the stages of the human life cycle. The title “Passages” is borrowed from Gail Sheehan’s book on this topic, with the same title. She backs up her scheme with interviews, but has relatively little on people after age 40 or 50, which is a pity.
II. Signs of the Zodiac: The Numerical and Symbolic System.
I like to draw the system as a circular pattern, ( as in the diagram) but for ease of presentation I describe it here in linear fashion.
| Aries | March | 9 o’clock position | plus | creates fire. |
| Taurus | April | 8 o’clock position | minus | gathers earth. |
| Gemini | May | 7 o’clock position | plus | spreads air. |
| Cancer | June | 6 o’clock position | minus | creates water. |
| Leo | July | 5 o’clock position | plus | gathers fire. |
| Virgo | August | 4 o’clock position | minus | spreads earth. |
| Libra | Sept. | 3 o’clock position | plus | creates air. |
| Scorpio | Oct. | 2 o’clock position | minus | gathers water. |
| Sagittarius | Nov. | 1 o’clock position | plus | spreads fire. |
| Capricorn | Dec. | 12 o’clock position | minus | creates earth. |
| Aquarius | January | 1 o’clock position | plus | gathers air. |
| Pisces | February | 2 o’clock position | minus | spreads water. |
There are 12 signs. The number 12 is divisible by 2,3,4, and 6. The 2-division is represented by the + and — alteration. All pluses are compatible with each other, as are all minuses, but pluses and minuses are not very compatible with each other. The 3-division is represented by the alteration of “cardinal, fixed, mutable”, which means “create (generate)”, “gather (collect)”, and “spread (disseminate)”. Or, the Hindu Trinity of Creator (Brahma), Preserver (Vishnu), and Destroyer (Shiva).
The 4-division is represented by the four elements, fire, earth, air, water, regularly alternating around the circle. The combination of the 3-division and the 4-division makes up all the possible combinations of the Hindu Trinity with the Greek elements — all present and none repeating — like “ringing changes” on bells, or composing a fugue. The cycle closes on the same note on which it began.
The 6-division is represented by the group of all the pluses and the group of all the minuses. Since all the pluses are either fire or air, they can be collectively called “hot” (since fire is hot and dry and air is hot and wet, in the traditional scheme), and since all the minuses are either water or earth, they can be collectively called “cold” (since water is cold and wet and earth is cold and dry). I also like the terms, for the pluses, “ether” for fire-air, and for the minuses, “mud” for water and earth. My terms are prejudiced, however, because as an Aquarius I am an ether person and I have had some unfortunate encounters with mud people.
| dry | wet | |
| hot | fire | air |
| cold | earth | water |
Note that the 4-division (elements) represents nouns (what it is), the 3-division represents verbs (what it does), and the 2- or 6-division represents adjectives (what qualities it has).
With respect to the months of the year noted beside each sign, note that “creates” always corresponds to the beginning of a season (an equinox or a solstice). This marks the beginning or “creation” not only of the season, but also of a series of 3 stages for that element, dispersed through the year or the circle. Next after “creates” naturally comes “gathers”, for both the season and the element (in different places in the scheme), and last comes “spreads” or “disseminates”. Note that the end is not really “destroys”, but “transmits elsewhere”, like seeds blowing in the wind, ready to grow new trees. That is, back to “creates”, around full circle.
Going month by month around the circle, “creates”, “gathers” and “spreads” repeats 4 times through the year, applying to each of the 4 elements, but in interweaving fashion. That this fits in the circle with perfect repetition is a miraculous property of the number 12, the base of the Babylonian number system, much better than our 10-system.
To everything, turn, turn, turn
There is a season, turn, turn, turn,
And a time for every purpose under heaven.
A time to be born, a time to die,
A time to plant, a time to reap,
A time to kill, a time to heal,
A time to laugh, a time to weep,
A time to build up, a time to break down,
A time to dance, a time to mourn,
A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together.
A time of war, a time of peace,
A time of love, a time of hate,
A time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing,
A time to gain, a time to lose,
A time to rend, a time to sew,
A time of love, a time of hate,
A time of peace — I swear it’s not too late.
(psalm, as modified in a popular song)
III. Signs of the Zodiac: Character Sketches and Life Stages.
(a) Character sketches. (From books on astrology.)
Aries — enthusiastic but naive, friendly but too trusting.
Taurus — industrious but stubborn, steady and conservative:
Gemini — quick but fickle, charming but two-faced.
Cancer — loving, family-oriented, meek and mild, clinging.
Leo — high achiever, leader, but domineering.
Virgo — careful and meticulous, a bit of a worrier.
Libra — flexible, eager for knowledge and change, liberal. Scorpio — anxious and jealous, passionate but suspicious.
Sagittarius — knowledgeable but sometimes foolish.
Capricorn — practical, businesslike, efficient, calculating.
Aquarius — intellectual, scientific, but also compassionate.
Pisces — mystical, sensitive, deep insight and intuition.
(b) Correlations of “system” with life stages. First, let us note certain symbolic equivalences.
| Element | Value | Colour |
| Fire | Life | Red |
| Water | Love | Green |
| Air | Wisdom | Blue |
| Earth | Action | Yellow |
(From “The Great Invocation” and other sources.)
Now let us proceed to the correlations.
Aries, who “creates fire” (begins life) at the start of the season cycle (spring equinox), is like a baby, and the character traits correspond. Age 0 to 7. Erikson stages: trust, autonomy, initiative.
Taurus, who “gathers earth”, is a child learning practical knowledge. This is the mid-childhood plateau, Erikson stage “industry”. Age 7 to 14.
Gemini, who “spreads air”, is a teenager spreading idealism. Being “twins” (gemini) indicates search for identity, as an Erikson stage. Age 14 to 21.
Cancer, who “creates water” (which symbolizes love), finds a partner for intimacy and helps build a home. Erikson stage: intimacy. Age 21 to 28.
Leo, who “gathers fire”, is in the prime of life, at the peak of what Aries as creator of life has started. Produces children herself. At apex of career, in top form. (“Career” may be child-rearing.) Erikson stage: generativity. Age 28 to 35.
Virgo, who “spreads earth”, tends to give good advice to her growing children and to all and sundry, sometimes in a fussy way. Parent of a school-age child. Age 35 to 42.
Libra, who “creates air”, is newly liberated from child care, her children now being teenagers. She/he is starting a new or second career. Autumn equinox is half-way around the circle of the life cycle. Change from conservative Virgo to liberal or radical Libra. (Erikson’s stage of “integration” or “maturity” may be either in Virgo or in Libra, depending on whether you think that conservatism or radicalism is more “mature”.) Mid-life crisis, “life begins at 40”, menopause. Age 42-49.
Scorpio, who “gathers water”, is an empty-nester. She/he wants to hoard anxiously the love which is departing, gets in trouble in new career or in marriage because of jealousies. Erikson names no more stages after this point. Age 49 to 56.
Sagittarius, who uspreads fire”, passes on life to the third generation as a grandparent Age 56 to 63.
Capricorn, who “creates earth”, becomes a business or political leader valued for practical experience. Age 63 to 70.
Aquarius, who “gathers air”, is an elder philosopher or spiritual leader, maybe writes memoirs or a definitive book. Age 70 to 77.
Pisces, who “spreads water”, if still alive, may have achieved spiritual enlightenment through meditation, for which there is now time in retirement. Like Gautama Buddha, he comes back from Nirvana to disperse love throughout the world. Age 77 to 84.
Or, Pisces is a fetus before Aries (birth), immersed in a fluid like a fish, totally surrounded and bathed by love. And so we begin another cycle… My descriptions are somewhat from a woman’s point of view, because I am a woman. The Erikson stages are crowded into childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, except for the last one. He ignored transitions in later life. So did Gail Sheehy in “Passages”, almost as if life does end at 40. It need not and does not. A “passage” occurs every 7 years, and 12 of these fit very neatly into a human life time. Some of these are celebrated by “rites of passage”:
0- birth, 7 (6) — school starts, 14 (13) — Bar Mitzvah, confirmation, or initiation, 21 — marriage, graduation, first job, 28 — parenthood, 70 retirement, 84 — death. The gap between age 28, and 70 should be filled with other celebrations every 7 years. We should invent them.
IV — The Staircase Pattern of Rise and Run. (See essay of that name in Section x.)
The twelve seven-year stages go in stepwise progression, alternating rise and run as in a staircase. These are successive periods of “growth spurt” or change (rise) and plateaus of quiescence and consolidation (run). The rises happen to coincide with pluses of the Zodiac system as first described here, and the runs with the minuses. New wisdom or experience is acquired in each rise and retained or maintained in each run.
Each rise and subsequent run form a pair, characterized by a particular achievement. The rise — run pairs (steps of the staircase) and their achievements are listed below.
Aries/Taurus, age 0-14. Develops independence and ego-strength.
Gemini/Cancer, age 14-28. Finds partner and founds family.
Leo/Virgo, age 28-42. Career and competence peaks and stabilizes.
Libra/Scorpio, age 42-56. Second career, oriented more toward public service or self-fulfillment than to making money.
Sagittarius/Capricorn, age 56-70. Wisdom and experience applied to service.
Aquarius/Pisces, age 70-84. Search for the meaning of life, spiritual enlightenment.
The beginning of each “rise” can also be called a “crisis”.. We begin with a childhood crisis, (e.g. “the terrible twos”) go on to the adolescent crisis at 14 (start of Gemini), then the “30s passage” (see Sheehy) at 28 (start of Leo or end of Cancer), the midlife crisis at 42 (end of Virgo), the “rise to leadership” crisis at 56 (end of Scorpio), and the “spiritual awakening” crisis at 70 (end of Capricorn). “Crisis” means either breakdown -or breakthrough, and so not everyone makes it to the next stage; many become stuck there, and this is why the higher stages may sound unfamiliar.
A variation on this pattern is the Hindu sequence of life stages: student, householder, public official, sage or holy man. I would correlate this as follows:
Student: Aries, Taurus, Gemini. Age 0-21.
Householder: Cancer, Leo, Virgo. Age 21-42.
Public official: Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn. Age 42-70.
Sage or holy man: Aquarius, Pisces. Age 70-84.
The pattern is almost 3 signs per stage, but Capricorn had to be moved to make sense. Maybe Libra should stand alone between the. stages; as a poiilt halfway around the circle. It does. in the Tarot cards, as Wheel of Fortune.
V. The Major Arcana of the Tarot Cards.
This sequence I also take as representing stages, in this case of spiritual development. I don’t care for the use of Tarot in fortune-telling, but again, as symbolic language, they have great value. Perhaps this was the real message of the creators of this sequence.
In the scheme below, I indicate first the Zodiac sign, then the Tarot card, then the concept symbolized. If the reader wants a correlation with life stages and ages, this table has to be used in conjunction with the previous tables.
| Zodiac sign | Major Arcana | Description |
| Aries | Fool | Incarnation |
| Magician | Primordial life energy | |
| Taurus | High Priestess | Knowledge of good/evil |
| Gemini | Empress | Femininity |
| Emperor | Masculillity | |
| Cancer | Hierophant | Conformity |
| Lovers | Intimacy | |
| Leo | Chariot | Control of passions |
| Strength | Empowerment | |
| Virgo | Hermit | Guidance to others |
| Wheel of fortune | Half-way to final understanding | |
| Libra | Justice | Resolution of good/evil |
| Scorpio | Hanged man | Conversion or Revaluation |
| Death | Transfiguration | |
| Sagittarius | Temperance | Non-attachment |
| Capricorn | Devil | Temptation |
| Tower | Overcoming ego | |
| Aquarius | Star | Enlightenment |
| Pisces | Moon | Occult initiation |
| Beyond Zodiac | Sun | Liberation |
| Judgment | Awakening | |
| World | Final understanding, | |
| Nirvana |
The second half of the Major Arcana, beyond the Wheel of Fortune, represents the higher stages of spiritual development, those not reached by most people. The lower half represents the usual developmental sequence of almost everyone. So of course the Erikson scheme does not extend beyond the lower half, and even the Zodiac series stops short before the Major Arcana ends. So these schemes overlap only partially.
Abraham Maslow, in his theory of the hierarchy of human needs, stops at “self-actualization”, which corresponds to Erikson’s “integrity”, and so only, at most, to the Wheel of Fortune on the Major Arcana. He does mention “peak experience”, which hints at the higher stages, but does not develop this. So in Western psychology and sociology there is no theory of the difficult spiritual (mystical) stages; these are treated only in the Tarot symbolism and in Eastern religions. The upper half of the Major Arcana is virgin territory for developmental psychology — with some notable exceptions: Carl Jung, Aldous Huxley, and William James, who have ventured to explore there.
After fulfilling all our social roles — student, householder, even the altruistic one of public service — and after attaining self-actualization, we face the mid-life crisis. Most people then slip back and descend into resignation and despair. Their life trajectory becomes a parabola, like a ball thrown up at an angle and hitting the ground again — a trajectory from the cradle to the grave. The courageous few struggle on, and their path continues along the trail of the ascending staircase. Since this path is less well known than the previous stages, let us describe the steps in a little more detail.
First of all, a total revaluation occurs; everything is seen upside down (Hanged Man). Then death either crushes us or kills the ego to liberate the Self (Jung’s “individuation”). This means enlarging the field of vision inside our mind from the narrow beam of consciousness to take in at least some of the unconscious content from that vast internal territory. (See “The Realm of the Mind” in Section VI.) The Death card indicates a true Crisis in the usual sense of danger and opportunity; not many people make it through this. Breakdown means decline into despair for the rest of your life, i.e. spiritual death and atrophy. Breakthrough means transfiguration to consciousness of the Self, i.e. a wholly new person. Christian mystics used to call this “being born again”, though that term has lately been misused by narrow-minded rather than wide-minded people. In terms of the Zodiac signs, this is the Scorpio crisis. Of course, people who gave up at age 40 as being already “over the hill” never even get to this point; they have already opted out of life before encountering this great opportunity.
After this crisis, we attain non-attachment to avoid suffering (as in Buddhism). The card symbolizing this is Temperance, with its picture of an angel standing with one foot on water and the other foot on the land, with equanimity. This means balance and, in a way, non-judgment; while in the Justice card which preceded the revaluation in the Hanged Man, judgments between good and evil were still carried on.
Next, in another stormy crisis, this time a double one, we overcome both the temptation of amassing material wealth (the Devil) and eartWy power (the Tower), and achieve a final victory over the remainder of the old ego. This is the Capricorn crisis. If we are called to leadership in government or business at this time in our life, we either succumb and become corrupt (stealing from the public purse) or drunk with power — as many leaders do. If we win through, we have a chance to become leaders toward human betterment in the chosen sphere in which we operate.
Then and only then, with this victory achieved, can we sail serenely into spiritual enlightenment (Star). We have been sufficiently purified by the ordeal of multiple crises to become like the Phoenix flying out into the spiritual realm. We are not yet saints, but incipient holiness is becoming apparent.
This could be the end of the journey, but surprisingly, it is not. Through further efforts, we are initiated into occult knowledge (Moon) and break through to easy mastery (symbolized by a child riding a horse bare-back, in Sun), i.e. liberation. And we are still not through! We finally receive a direct call, by the angel’s trumpet in Judgment, to awakening from that long dream called life, to a total awareness of reality and a perfect understanding of the World.
In some descriptions of spiritual disciplines, the terms conversion, revaluation, enlightenment, initiation, liberation, and awakening are used interchangeably. To me, the great merit of the Tarot symbolism is that they are separated into distinct stages, which can be seen as a continuation of developmental stages which everyone goes through at the lower levels. How dare Gail Sheehy stop just when things are getting really interesting!
VI. The Seven Chakras.
This is a Hindu system, indicating the vital centres of different types of energy along the ascending vertical axis of the human body. I will describe below their meanings, locations, and associations with Tarot stages.
| Name/location | Meaning | Freudian term | Tarot relation |
| Root (of spine) | Life | Magician | |
| Sacral | Eros | Id | Empress/Emperor |
| Navel | Praxis | Ego | Chariot |
| Heart | Agape | Super-id | Wheel of Fortune |
| Throat | Prophecy | Super-ego | Hanged Man |
| Brow | Logos | Self (Jung) | Star |
| Crown | Mega-synthesis | World |
At the root is the basic life energy, sometimes called Kundalini or serpent power. At the sacrum is sexual energy and the pleasure/pain principle. At the navel or solar plexus, we get the integration of the personality at the conscious level, with some control over the basic energies. At the heart we return from will to feelings, but at a higher level of the developmental spiral — now a generalized love for all. “Super-idol” is my term, not Freud’s. At the throat we become preachers and prophets of ethical and ideological principles, which gain control over the ego (as earlier ego gained control over the id). At the brow we discover both the laws of the physical world and the content of our internal world (part at least of the unconscious mind). Finally at the crown (like a halo of the saint over our head), we synthesize all the previous aspects, i.e. feelings, will, and reason, and approach the Divine Mind.
Again, many people do not attain the higher stages, and get stuck along the way. Probably most people live somewhere between the navel and the heart, struggling to extend their sphere of caring beyond family and nation to all humanity, or humanity plus nature. We do have individuals at the throat and the brow, and they are our intellectual and ethical and spiritual leaders. Saints who attain the crown must be extremely rare.
VII — Conclusion.
We have explored development schemes, mainly from traditional arcane philosophies as inferred from their symbolic systems, but also tried to put this together with psychological and social theories of human development. The picture that emerged is quite coherent, but of course it remains a theory, with no definite evidence provided here for its truth (approach to reality). Provisionally, however, it does give some guidance for leading more fulfilled lives. If nothing else, if all the details are forgotten or ignored or found false, we can at least cling to the vision of the ascending staircase, which need not end at any particular age. We will finally die when our bodies wear out, but our minds (barring illness) can continue reaching upward right up to the end. As Carmen sings, “I will go on living until the day I die.”