‘Surprised’ By Henri Rousseau 1890 {{PD}}

I mention empowerment a lot—it’s the essence of Juno, plays a huge role in our relationships with Mars, Pluto, and even figures in our view of Saturn, is the essence of deploying our Sun, and is fundamental to functioning effectively in life, so it ends up being a pervasive idea—and it has several components: How well are we functioning? How much are our choices our own? How ‘in charge’ of our own energy usage are we? How much are we subject to others’ Will? How free are we to act? We have a tendency to answer these questions by looking around ourselves, to our external situation, and end up basing our estimation of our empowerment on how much we are able to effect external circumstances. This is understandable; we’re coached to see ourselves as powerful only in relation to how much of an impact we can make on the material world—but that’s a skewed vision of what empowerment really means, and can send us down the wrong road in seeking it.

Empowerment is really our own internal measurement of how much we feel in charge of and able to affect the circumstances of our own lives. In many ways, it is largely subjective; based in our own perceptions, a sense of successful empowerment can vary wildly from individual to individual. The individual imprisoned may gain a massive sense of empowerment by intimidating others prisoners, by carving a shiv out of a toothbrush, by working on her own legal defense appeal in the prison library, or by serving others in the infirmary—and obviously, these things differ from each other in many other important ways. The vital point is that estimation of what brings power to the individual is entirely based on one’s own ideas of what constitutes power, relative to our external circumstances—and those who function with an internal (‘What do I think of me?’) rather than external power locus are bound to fare best.

Of course, astrologically speaking, what’s empowering for a particular Moon placement may not be empowering for that same individual’s Sun, and vice versa and so on, through all the placements. To know what’s most empowering for someone, we need to know their viewpoint, the two or three most dominant energies, the ones that must get attention in order for the individual to function well. To that end, we’ll take a quick look at what’s empowering for various signs in general.

Aries: has got to do it (or go to war over it).

Taurus: has got to have it (or provide it).

Gemini: has got to say it (or think about it).

Cancer: has got to nurture it (or love it).

Leo: has got to make it shine (or must make it perform).

Virgo: has got to count it (or harvest it).

Libra: has got to make peace with it (or partner with it).

Scorpio: has got to change it (or destroy it).

Sagittarius: has got to know about it (or believe in it).

Capricorn: has got to build it (or constrain it).

Aquarius: has got to make it new (and/ or understand it).

Pisces: has got to embrace it (and maybe escape it, create it, or forget about it).

This describes some of the effects of feeling we lack empowerment

I hope you’re all doing well, and having a great week. It’s gray here–surprise, Seattle!