Family systems

December 20, 2021

Signs and planetary patterns tend to run in families. Do you have a family in which there's a glut of birthdays in the span of a couple of weeks? That's probably an astrological theme. The thing is, if there's an abundance of one sign or one pattern, there's not going to be room in the family system for everyone to play that sun sign role to the hilt, so different people in the family will express different variations of the same energy.

Let me pick the most common sun sign, which is Cancer. Let's say there are a bunch of people in your family born June 20(ish)-July 20(ish). Now here's a list of Cancer stereotypes:

  • the nurturer

  • the sensitive

  • the patriot

  • the family historian

  • the chef

  • the homebody

  • the overly emotional

  • the passive

  • the baby

  • the creator

  • the intuitive

  • the protective

See how diverse that is? There's a ton of ways to do Cancer energy. So when people get all like "well why don't twins have exactly the same personality if astrology is real?" and, look, I used to be one of those people, so I get it. But you can see that there's plenty of different options for how to express the same energy, and you're unlikely to be inclined to take on a role that someone else in your environment is already playing (if there's already a family chef,  you don't want to fight them for kitchen space, do you? I value my life...).  I'm also being overly simplistic for the sake of giving you an example. You might find that everyone has some planet in Cancer or a bunch of Cancer risings or something if you went around collecting family birth info.

There are a ton of birthdays within the span of a week in my own family, and then several other family members who have their moon sign in my sun sign (which is Aquarius). My sister and I are born a day apart, three years apart, in fact, and our mom has her moon where our suns are. This is actually really common in parent/child charts. But each of us has a different expression of Aquarius: I was the rebel growing up, my sister was more avant-garde and free-thinking. Our mom's the humanitarian. And large family gatherings invariably turn into debates (you get the sense that others are listening to you just to find something to disagree with you about). But outside of the family system, we each get a little bit more room to breathe, because the role of free-thinker or humanitarian isn't taken by someone else.

Conversely, you can find explanations in charts for why you feel like the black sheep. Like maybe you're the only person without a fire sign rising, so you don't understand why everyone's yelling all the time. Or maybe you're the only one with a bunch of planets in earth and you spend all your time trying to talk sense into people who are all up in their own ideals.

The only thing I can say for sure about family systems is that you WILL find patterns when you look at them and they WILL explain a lot.

XO,

J