This article was originally published in the Federation of Australian astrologers (FAA) March 2023 and on Astrodienst April 2023.
Bridging the Individual and the Collective
From a very young age, I was fascinated by the idea of discovering my life’s calling and purpose. In my vivid imagination, I thought an angel messenger would come and speak my calling to me, clearly letting me know what I was here to do. My Catholic teachers planted the idea that God would let us know our calling; I started quieting my mind to ensure I wouldn’t miss the summons.
But it wasn’t this easy. No angelic messenger came down to point me in the right direction, so I stopped waiting and decided to go on my own quest. I started by exploring what sparked my curiosity, hoping it would lead me to find my ‘thing.’ Later in my 20s, I finally started connecting the dots by linking astrology and depth psychology.
Astrology gave me an archetypal map of my inner geography, helping me come to know the many denizens of my psyche. Each of the planetary archetypes and their interconnections illuminated the multilayered ways that purpose, vocation, and livelihood could manifest in life. In my experience, the entire chart had something to say about how my purpose and vocation might manifest and the many ways I could earn my living.
It wasn’t a static answer for me, but an ever-peeling onion, how one thing would open up to another layer of possibility and meaning. For the more I engaged with my chart, noticed what the transits and Secondary Progressions awakened in me, the more I saw how the birth chart spoke to me.
The Sun illuminates what I am and what I’m more fully becoming, and calling me to shine into my strengths. The Moon keeps me connected to my emotional needs and aware of how my shifting moods are directional markers on the journey. Mercury informs how my mind is engaged and how to remain connected in the in-between spaces of life. Venus reminds me what brings me pleasure and joy are invitations to lean into, not turn away from. Mars teaches me to take notice of the things that make my blood both boil and race, both in righteous anger and excitement, because those may be revealing what I’m willing to fight for and take a stand. Jupiter helps me see opportunities in what may have come easily, perhaps more importantly, in the challenges. Uranus teaches me to look for the unexpected, to be open to ways forward that haven’t been written yet. While Pluto, like an ever-burning ember, keeps me connected to the potency of the realms of the deep by teaching me not to be satisfied with surface answers but to look under the hood.
But what about Saturn and Neptune? I’ll speak to this odd couple further on. However, in my experience these two have been my squabbling divorced parents, pulling me in different directions, and leaving an inner split between the concrete and the ineffable, that only much later in life, have I been able to weave together.
Purpose, Vocation & Livelihood: why they matter now more than ever
Back in late 2019, as the clock clicked closer to the start of 2020 and a new decade, I mentioned that we were entering a time of ‘all hands on deck’ at a talk I gave for a women-owned business networking group. I called the 2020s: The Courageous Decade. For much like the planets and the endings and beginnings of their new phases with each other, or their arrival in another sign, we too needed to embrace our creative selves and dare to bring forth what was called from within. A purposeful calling and soul in our lives matters. For amid chaos resides its sibling, creativity, needing midwives to help it be born in the world. What we need now, more than ever, are creation makers.
From my work as a life coach and astrologer, I focus on working with folks at the intersection of soul purpose and livelihood – the place where they are called to claim all the spokes of their life wheel to give birth to a more expansive sense of self, as well as their creative endeavors. The creative edge between becoming who we are meant to be and how we earn our livelihood is soul-making and challenging. It’s challenging because, as the planetary tango reveals, we’re in the eye of the storm of an age of creatively chaotic change.
Do what you love – Love what you do
When our visibility is covered by the smoke and dust of old paradigms crumbling, we can use the gift of Ariadne’s red thread and, like Theseus, hold on tight to it as we find our way out of the labyrinth. This red thread (1) can be taken as what we love, what beckons our soul, and the oft-quiet voice of our calling (vocatus) or the promptings of our daimon.
Love speaks to the presence of Venus, who invokes change, transformation, and awakening. She, like Mercury, is a Liminal Goddess who brings things into a relationship. She is our guide in understanding who we are, what we value, and our special plumage (i.e., talents, joys, and what makes us attractive, not just sexually, but also as creation makers.)What’s been missing from our concept of livelihood is Eros. While many want to do what they love, they’re left with the conundrum of navigating a system that belittles soul and joy while trying to bring forth a new way of working and doing business.
Connecting to our red thread can be our individual way of honouring and even healing our relationship to Venus in our culture; the deeper work in how each of us holds the tension of the opposites of Saturn and Neptune. Being able to weave both the concretization of the Saturnian process with the imaginal process of Neptune is how we can reimagine and create our way forward, thus expanding our understanding of work, livelihood and our bigger purpose on this planet.
On Vocation
Vocation comes from vocatus, a calling from our inner voice or soul. It’s more than work, as in a job, or career, for it, encompasses the two expressions of work: the great Opus of our lives with its gift of meaning and purpose as well as the work to bring forth our talents, gifts – our Venusian special plumage to our livelihood.
Our culture has a dysfunctional relationship with ‘vocation’ because we tend to expect that we should know it from a young age. Yes, we may meet our vocation early in life, but often we may also feel overwhelmed or confused by it, thus actively avoiding it. It’s best to think of vocation as a journey with wild turnings, detours, and ‘mistakes.’In looking at vocation as the work of our lives, we can see here the strands of both Saturn (work) and Neptune (spiritual & imaginal) woven into our cosmic DNA, perhaps joined through Venus’ relational connection to what is our innate talents and gifts. This soul journey involves our entire birth chart, but when examining bringing our calling into the physical world, we need to focus our attentions on how both Saturn and Neptune figure in our charts. Where can we create the sturdy vessel, Saturn, to receive, even capture, the ineffable aspect of our dreams that is Neptune. Saturn is the both the birth canal and the midwife to our Neptune’s visions.
We’re each called to serve in some meaningful way, for we each have a form of genius (daimon) within that knows why we’re here. We’re each born as an answer to a question of our times, and now more than ever, we need to awaken to our genius and its hidden qualities. From the outside, this may seem like a calling, but in reality, this is more of an activation of a different consciousness and way of being and seeing the world. Upon answering this call, we have to forgo the old maps created by our cultural legacy.
The Compasses on the Path
There’s no need to journey blindly when exploring our purpose, vocation, and livelihood. We have compasses to help us on the path. Firstly, our curiosity towards exploring our early memories and expression of our talents. This archeological dig of your childhood also includes your ancestral lineage.
Secondly, take stock of your life’s ‘One Issue.’ We may think of ourselves as burdened with many issues, but in reality, we carry one or, at best, two core issues. Once we look at all the various traumas and dramas in our lives, we can see a pattern that points to one issue, such as trust, disconnection, loss, betrayal, self-worth, etc. Whatever the presenting issue, this points to a particular type of medicine or gift we bring to the world, which also prefigures in our work.
Thirdly, we have the hidden gold we couldn’t or wouldn’t express when younger. The return of what was once repressed, although uncomfortable, has profound clues to what we are here to do or help others bring forth. Ultimately the core compass is our ability to seek and see the patterns in our lives. The clarity we desire around our purpose and how to bring it into our livelihood requires that we become more proficient in pattern recognition. Lastly, we have instrumental compasses that can serve us at different stages of our journey, one of them being astrology.
You’re a Vessel
Questions around purpose and livelihood are about soul work, which is about becoming who you are meant to be from the inside out. If we envision the world as ensouled and alive, we can also see that creative creations such as books, movies, stories, and even baked pies are birthed into life. Thoughts and ideas are ensouled entities and have a simpatico relationship with you. What wants to be birthed through you is both an aspect of your soul’s healing and also your gift and medicine to the world. From this vantage point, your creative endeavor (i.e., a book, an art piece, etc.) or a business (another type of brainchild with your creative DNA) is an entity that wants to be birthed through you. This is your Saturnian journey as it also involves your livelihood, testing both the creation-making and how others receive what you’re bringing into the world.
Birthing or crafting your business (i.e., the marriage of purpose & livelihood) is the creation myth of something bigger than your Ego could ever imagine. As with any creation myth, something needs to die or be sacrificed, and that part holds certain limitations that block your soul’s unfurling. Business is also a profoundly personal journey. Because it’s not only you giving ‘birth’ to the business; it’s also about the business birthing you.
Saturn teaches us to give our ideas substance, fix boundaries, adapt and adjust to the ‘real’ world. Gone awry, one becomes entrenched, crystalized, and in time suffering from unfulfillment. It’s like the moisture is drained from our lives and all that is accomplished turns to dust. What is needed here is the imaginal waters of Neptune to loosen our rusty joints and reconnect us to the unseen realms that want to be in relationship with the material world.
For those questioning their work in the world, be it through their career or in how they’re birthing a business, the tension of Saturn’s demands for coagulation and Neptune’s ephemeral visions is the guiding thread on our spiritual and healing journey that the current times beckons. Otherwise, we may be facing a very bleak future that is filled with misplaced alliances to man-made creations that lack soul.
Crafting your own business or a creative endeavor is alchemical work. It’s the Sacred Marriage within, our desire to unify something inside us, which is often represented by our Sun and Moon. This union is a core element of the healing part of our birthing and crafting of our business/creative endeavor. From these lenses, the business or creative endeavor can be seen as the alembic (vessel) of our soul’s alchemical work.
The Sacred Marriage of the Sun and Moon reflects how business is deeply personal – not just business. Our relationship with our Sun is put under a microscope when we’re beckoned to face its gifts and need for growth. In my experience of working with clients starting their own business, what I’ve noticed is how often the real challenge is in letting their Sun shine. As for the Moon, our own relationship with self-nurturing and care, brings to the surface any unhealed aspect we have inherited from our family dynamics.
Many times, depending on the configuration of a client’s Sun and Moon, the unhealed and unresolved issues with either mother or father come to the fore. Often the challenges experienced in crafting a flourishing business serve as an opportunity to heal family dynamics from the client’s early days or were inherited by either (or both) their father’s or mother’s lineage. Add the pressure of concretization of Saturn and the sacrificial themes of Neptune, which brings both insights, but also unexpected stressors, as the creative pressure confronts the need to earn a livelihood.
Soulpreneurs & Healing
The courage to heed the call of inner promptings and to birth and craft a unique path in the world through your work or creations is more than an individual journey of soul-making. It’s also a journey to heal the collective archetype of both business and livelihood. As our economic and financial systems signal how diseased our way of earning a living is, what arises is a new type of creative entrepreneur: the Soulpreneur. There are three characteristics of this new breed of folks who are reimagining work, purpose, and livelihood.
Soulpreneurs see themselves as channels of expression for Self and others. They want to bring their unique vision and creative expression into their work or business. Although often unconsciously, they embrace being vessels for something other to be born through them, seeing business’s spiritual and soulful dimension. They approach business and livelihood from an intentional stance of purpose and meaning. They want to align meaning and purpose in their work, thus going beyond a myopic view of business as only a way to earn a living. Lastly, they are creation makers forging new pathways of imagining livelihood that isn’t beholden to our capitalist and cultural legacy.
Many of my clients fall under this category of Soulpreneurs – creatives and mystics who want to do purposeful work, but also earn their living by doing what is meaningful to them. When taking a wider lens, I see in their (and my own) struggles the alchemical dance of Saturn and Neptune. While Neptune beckons us to connect to the imaginal realms, fuels us with images of possible and even ideal scenarios, Saturn’s oft harsh and biting reality calls us back to earth. It’s a constant dance between the vision and the messiness of making it take shape in the ‘real world’ of Saturn.
What I’ve found is that as Soulpreneurs we have to honor both Saturn and Neptune in our lives: work on creating and strengthening the containers of our business and creative endeavors through the discipline of Saturn, but also leave room through our spiritual and creative practices to channel the gifts of Neptune. This odd couple of Saturn and Neptune need not be anathema to our work, but can be courted to be our loyal mentors on this journey of both bringing forth our work, but also healing our culture’s dysfunctional relationship with livelihood.
The Journey: Its Landscape
The journey of integrating purpose and livelihood is full of fateful detours and wrong turnings, paraphrasing C.G. Jung. Plus, it’s not a one-and-done type of journey, for it’s something we will revisit at different times in our lives, for each encounter will deepen our self-understanding. There are two distinct phases in this archetypal quest for our purpose; each has unique needs.
The Labyrinth Phase is filled with questions about who one is and what has informed and influenced their life. It is accompanied by confusion over why the status quo is no longer satisfying and an anxious need for clarity. This is a liminal stage where the old ways of doing things no longer serve, but the new still needs to be clarified, untried, or yet to show itself. During this stage, it’s essential to have active patience by taking small but iterative steps toward what beckons and widening one’s perspective to see beyond the norm.
This phase may be prompted through a Saturn Transit (i.e. its Return, or transits to the Midheaven or Ascendant). But it can also be by a Neptunian transit to the Sun, Moon or Ascendant. And in more dramatic instances, through the Plutonian underworld journey. The way through during this liminal stage is often by following the guidance of our Mercury (i.e. follow your curiosity) and also Venus, as it reminds us that reengaging with what brings us pleasure, and taking stock of what attracts us, both in small and larger ways, can move us forward.
During the Alignment Phase, one is amid their return from the labyrinth of discovery. One has a sense of who they are and now carries a vision of what one wants to bring into the world. The challenge during this phase is transforming the dream into reality and engaging with the messiness of giving birth to this vision. Because it’s at this stage, the vision is tested, and the untapped inner resources and commitment to one’s purpose are needed.
This is when the rubber meets the road, and it’s common to experience self-doubt, challenges around articulating one’s vision and visibility, and overwhelm that fogs up one’s sense of clarity and perspective. It’s a growing down phase – feet on the ground. The Alignment Phase brings us to face the demands of discipline, devotion and work of Saturn, while not losing connection to the vision given to us by Neptune, or even Uranus.
Claiming the spokes of your life’s wheel
Astrology is a potent compass when helping folks navigate the intersection of purpose and livelihood. It also allows one to understand better their lives’ main directions and how they can best relate to its creative demands. Approaching the chart from the perspective of business and livelihood, I invite my clients to explore these four directions on their wheel.
Essential Self
Here we explore what makes one what they are. It’s about reimagining their inner and outer resources, talents, and skills. When one is stuck or lost, it’s vital to come back to basics and reassess one’s untapped inner gold. The Essential Self invites us to take a closer look at our personal planets (Mercury, Venus & Mars.) It’s also about the first quadrant of our birth chart (first, second and third houses) and the signs and planetary rulers of these houses. This isn’t an inventory that is to be done once, but revisited many times in life, especially when we’re also having potent transits to this part of the chart.
Creative Self
Work and creative expressions have deep roots in where one comes from. One’s life’s work has its roots in family and ancestral lines. At this stage, it’s important to explore where one comes from and how that affects their ability to bring forth their creative expression in its many permutations. Here we’re invited to take a deeper look at our Sun and Moon, the second quadrant of our chart (fourth, fifth and sixth houses), and the houses ruled by the Luminaries. At this stage, it’s important to examine the many identities that make us who are by thoroughly exploring where we’ve come from, our family stories, patterns and myths, as well as aspects of the unlived lives of our parents that are showing up in our lives, especially through our work and livelihood.
Relational Self
The quest for purpose and meaning doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It also informs one’s relationships, both intimate and beyond. And it also serves as a healing journey for inherited family dynamics that show up in intimate relationships, work or business. This aspect of ourselves can be explored through a deep dive into the third quadrant of our birth charts (houses seven to nine) and the planets and house rulers of this area. How we relate to others illuminates how inherited values, beliefs and patterns walk into our lives through the Other. Any issues with our Relational Self will show up in our connections with co-workers, business partners, and our personal clients. It’s often in the sphere of work and livelihood that we confront the most complex, painful, but also creative aspects of our relationships with parents and siblings.
Social-Spiritual Self
One’s quest for purpose and meaning in their vocation is a social and spiritual journey. What one brings forth through their quest will ripple further through the fabric of their community. Through the Social-Spiritual Self, we weave all the other quadrants in the testing ground of the fourth and last quadrant of our chart (houses ten to twelve), and any of the planets and rulers of this area of our lives. Here the personal meets the social and the transpersonal aspects of our lives. It’s also in this sphere where the realms of Saturn and Neptune are bridged by Uranus. The realm of vocation (what called us) and how we bring this into the world through our work and creative endeavors takes shape and reaches further afield than we can imagine. The crucible of Saturn holds something that carries our unique stamp of how we give birth to the visions of Neptune. It’s through our Social-Spiritual Self that we see how our marriage of Saturn and Neptune unite in a way that also reveals our individuality.
Our birth charts reveal our unique inner geographies and their riches and hidden treasures. What we can bring for ourselves is curiosity and flexibility of perspective. Our inner work serves as a vessel for what wants to be birthed through us at this paradigm shift moment in our human history. As I often say to clients and students: “your inner work will ripple further afield than you can imagine”.
References:
1. Marcus Buckingham, Love + Work, Harvard Business Review Press, 2022, p. 69 (Kindle Version) “Red Threads are made of very different material. They appear to be extremely positively charged. You find yourself instinctively wanting to pull on those threads. And when you do, your life feels easier, more natural, time rushed by. These threads are the source of your Wyrd, your uniqueness, felt and then expressed in certain activities.”
Photo Credits:
Main image: Aleksandr Barsukov – via Unsplash
Subsequent images: Mantas Hesthaven, Denise Jans, Arash Hedieh, Caleb Jones, Vlad Bagacian, and Eunice Stahl via Unsplash
