Relationships: Our Essential Needs- Chapter 1 | Read with Me

Can I admit something to you? In all my years as an astrologer, I’ve pretty much stayed clear of studying evolutionary astrology. Through osmosis I’ve picked up that Pluto and the nodes (and the nodes’ rulers!) play a big part. But other than that, I couldn’t tell you much about evolutionary astrology. For some reason, the evolutionary school just felt off-putting to me. Perhaps its focus on the soul touched a bit too close to my religious trauma, but let’s not digress.

All this to say, I’m a novice when it comes to evolutionary astrology, and reading Relationships: Our Essential Needs by Jeffrey Wolf Green is my first serious foray into an evolutionary lens of astrology. I love relationships and I love astrology, so I figured I’d give this book a read and see what insights I can take away from it. I’ll be using this blog series mainly to keep track of my own thoughts and annotations as I make my way through the book, but I also want to invite you into my process. Come read with me, and maybe we’ll learn something from each other!

My Notes on Chapter 1: The Soul’s Essential Needs in Relationships

Okay, so I definitely have some catching up to do in terms of the evolutionary framework being used in this book. But the concepts are simple enough to follow along so far, even with my minimal knowledge. A major piece of note is that the natural zodiac, complete with outer planet rulers, is in full play. I’ll set the biases of my stony, Hellenistic astrologer heart to the side in my best attempt to embrace Green’s teachings.

With that acknowledgement out of the way, I do have a lot of thoughts on Chapter 1! Green posits that the key to understanding the soul’s emotional needs is by understanding the interplay of the archetypes present in the 2nd, 7th, and 12th house along with their respective natural signs and rulers. So the archetypes of the 2nd House/Taurus/Venus, the 7th House/Libra/Venus, and the 12th House/Pisces/Neptune will unlock your essential needs.

Why these placements? Because Venus (the planet of love and relationships) rules Taurus and Libra, and Venus’ higher octave, Neptune, rules Pisces. I’d also like to think that Pisces is part of the puzzle because it’s the sign of Venus’ exaltation, though this wasn’t mentioned as a factor in this chapter.

The basic archetypes are described as follows:

• 2nd House/Taurus/(inner) Venus: survival, self-reliance

• 7th House/Libra/(outer) Venus: Relationships to Other, projection

• 12th House/Pisces/Neptune: Transcendence, idealism

The relationships of these archetypes is explored through the “finger of god” or yod aspect pattern that these houses form in a chart. The 2nd and 12th houses sextile one another and each form an inconjunction to the 7th house. The inconjunctions indicate a crisis point in the relationship which can be resolved through the sextile.

This is the part I love and that really sparked my brain! As a couple’s therapist, I see the relationship crises described play out in my office every day. How do you negotiate meeting your own needs vs. having needs met by partners (2nd and 7th house crisis)? What happens when the honeymoon phase ends and you realize your partner is a flawed human (12th and 7th house crisis)? How can you stop relying on your relationship for your main sense of safety and find that peace within yourself (2nd, 7th, and 12th house crisis + resolution)?

These questions point to the relationship struggles so many of us have, and I can see these crises at the root of the issues my clients come in to work on. We all carry around idealized 12th house images of who we want our partner to be. But when this ideal is projected onto a real person, you set yourself up for failure- classic 12th house self-undoing right there! A flawed human being will never be able to live up to the rose-tinted expectations born from the 12th house. It’s delusional (Neptune) to think that your partner will always be able to meet every one of your survival needs, and the feeling of betrayal that arises when your partner can’t show up is devastating. Next thing you know, your trust is destroyed and you’re throwing yourself into the 2nd house drive of self-preservation. If your partner can’t show up for you, you’re gonna do it yourself! You don’t feel safe, and this danger is familiar. So you do what you need to survive- whether it’s building walls, distancing, fawning or some other survival strategy. And look at that! You’ve arrived back to the 2nd and 7th house crisis point.

Okay, so I didn’t mean for that to turn into a vignette, and really didn’t mean to call some of y’all out just now. But if that cycle resonates, find comfort in knowing that you certainly aren’t the only one navigating this or similar relational dynamics. The question of meeting your essential relationship needs, or differentiation, or interdependence or [insert whatever language to describe this phenomenon] has been the foundation of so many relationship frameworks for a reason. Feeling safe in relationships can be really hard for so many of us. And perhaps astrology can keep helping us figure it out.