Astrology

By Jade Emory
Oahu Island News, January 2005

Parenting

Parenting is reputed to be the hardest job on Earth. Often, parents try to make their children over in their own images, which rarely works, since their offspring have their own minds, their unique astrological “fingerprints.”

The great Lebanese poet, Kahlil Gibran, wrote in “The Prophet,” “Your children are not your children. …They come through you, not from you. …You may give them your love, but not your thoughts. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.”

Yet for generations, parents continued to try to clone their children into themselves, as if their offspring were satellites revolving around the well-intentioned egocentricity of the adult. Astrology shows how parents can give the best of themselves to help their children become the best of who they really are. But it requires much more than a superficial knowledge of the Sun signs of both parties.

A valuable key is to examine and resolve one’s own, unconscious reasons for guiding one’s children in a certain direction. If a parent regards the child as a puppet to serve the parent’s ego’s need for social recognition or economic security, by pressuring the child to participate in the adult’s pyramid scheme, even high-heeled, patent-leather stilettos and a whip will not elicit the desired result. The more a parent can be transpersonal, the more likely the parent will be able to cultivate the highest potential of the child.

Three thousand years ago, it was written in the Chinese oracle “I Ching,” “If we nourish the child, we lose the adult. If we nourish the adult, we lose the child.” So teaching offspring to be competent and responsible at every age will elicit maturity, even in a young child; and indulging the baby in a grown child (“spoiling”) will keep the adult child immature.

Each birth chart shows a mosaic of options, and updating the birth chart yearly indicates what the native is ready to develop now, whether the native is a parent or a child. Updates consist of both “progressions” and “transits.” The progressed Sun (one’s will) moves 1 degree a year, but the progressed Moon (emotional needs) moves 1 degree a month, changing signs entirely every 2-1/2 years. Transits are what is happening today, or on a special day, such as a birthday, known as a “solar return,” and can be used to predict development in the forthcoming year.

Oahu Island News Contributing Editor Jade Emory holds degrees in psychology and education, has taught in American and Canadian universities and has been a counselor since 1970. Jade passed beyond the earthly bonds of her body in 2020, and is studying astrology on the other side.