How many types of issues are there in our lives? Astrology says 6

June 15, 6:46 PMAstrology ExaminerMaria Barron

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Astrology is like a Wiki on the general subject of life, from way before Wikis ever existed. 

Insights about the themes of life and the ways they relate to one another are packed into the basic astrological wheel or chart. It’s amazing how much wide-ranging, widely-sourced philosophy is written into a simple picture of a 12-piece pie once you understand the symbolism. 

Remember that at its base, an astrological chart is a representation of the space around the Earth. The dot in the center is the Earth, and the planets are accurately mapped, relative to Earth, within the plane of space in which they all travel, marked off in twelve 30-degree sections, which are the signs. You could call them Star Sectors 1-12, but even NASA calls them Aries through Pisces. It’s a real map of the sky. 

But if you take the signs counter-clockwise from their beginning, Aries through Pisces, and read them like a parable, you don’t get lessons about space; you get lessons about the seasons of the year or the seasons of a natural life. From the Aries baby to the Virgo young adult on the lower “private” half of the chart, and then all the way across the arc of adult life on the top “public” half of the chart, people grow and change in relatively predictable ways, living a common story that culminates in a loss of physical self and mysterious transformation in the final sign, Pisces. There’s a generalized story of humanity in 12 chapters you can read that way in the circle of the wheel, sign by sign, before you ever even draw anyone’s planets into the picture. 

The issues are in the oppositions 

You can also read crosswise on the spokes of the wheel, or even slantwise, and then the lessons lose a sense of chronology and become issue-oriented. The lines straight through the center of the circle are, naturally, oppositions. Aries, for instance, is the sign opposite Libra, and the main issues associated with those signs – independence for Aries and partnership for Libra – are the yang and yin of a single major life issue. 

In other words, one of the main questions posed in every life, regardless of your sign, is whether to remain entirely self-identified or shift all the way over to the form of togetherness marked by the equal balance of Libra’s scales. Or maybe you’ll try to stake out some territory on the sliding scale in between. If you’re in different territory on that issue than a would-be partner is, or if you’re at issue with yourself about where you want to be in the matter, you’ve got a problem. If not, that’s all good. 

But essentially it’s a given that throughout life we’ll be called to decide, time and again, where we are on that Aries-Libra axis. It’s one of the major philosophical issues of life. 

In this way, apart from any specific look at any particular person’s stars, astrology is like a philosophy book with far too many authors to list. It’s a system of correlated observations about life and nature that has developed over thousands of years and across cultures from the Far East to the Middle East, through Europe and into America. It’s like a Wiki from way before Wikis ever existed. 

This system for passing along shared wisdom highlights six universal issues of life. These are arranged in the astrological wheel as yin-yang oppositions. They are: 

1. The need for independence versus the need for partnership. 
2. Personal goods and values needed to sustain one’s own life versus regenerative goods and values needed to sustain life as a whole for generations. 
3. The risk of staying with the known versus the risk of exploring the unknown. 
4. The importance of home versus the importance of career. 
5. The dissonance between individual creativity and collectively-created realities. 
6. The priority given to works on Earth versus faith in God, or materialism versus idealism. 

Some of these will stand out as issues you revisit time and again in your life. Others may not provoke much response in you but will be sore-points or triggers for other people. In any case, they provide a framework for looking at a given dilemma, boiled down to its basics. 

When a conflict clearly falls on the Gemini-Sagittarius axis, for instance, then it’s an issue of what you know versus what you might be able to discover if you took the time and put in the effort to learn. You can make a clear decision if you think of it in those terms and then decide whether you really need to know. 

Crossed up by the squares 

Things get hairier when the axes get crossed, like when the Aries-Libra issue (independence versus partnership) gets crossed up in the Cancer-Capricorn issue of home versus career, as it invariably does. That’s the next level of the way the wheel is organized. Any two axes that together divide the circle squarely into four equal pieces are challenging to each other. The tension inherent in oppositions can be roused to conflict by the squares. 

When it comes to really contentious societal issues – like gay marriage and abortion – it seems to me those conflicts tap into every one of the six main oppositional issues, making them really difficult to think all the way through. Everyone seems to end up on their own particular piece of whichever spoke of the wheel speaks loudest in their own heart. There aren’t two sides to those issues. There are something like 12. 

These various mathematical, geometrical relationships built into the symbolism of the zodiac and relating to different issues of life come into play in many different ways when we look at the astrological weather and what sort of season of life we’re in. Beyond the issues coded into the circle as inherent conflicts, there are harmonies coded in as well. The slantwise angles between signs, which together surround the center of the circle rather than dividing it, are the aspects that indicate harmony. 

But in looking at any sort of conflict, internally within yourself or affecting society at large, it can help to have a framework for thought. Let’s take a look at each of the six major oppositions and see if they are useful that way.