Outer Planets
The outer planets define our unconscious. Aspects between the outer & inner planets in your birth chart reveal much about the unseen self, accessing depths that often remain out of our day-to-day awareness.
Jupiter
Jupiter is the largest of all the planets in the solar system. This fact bears heavily on its symbolic function of Expansion in all forms. Known as the planet of Luck & Abundance, when taken to extremes, Jupiter can turn Luck into Delusion—or Abundance to Greed.
Jupiter’s placement in our birth charts symbolizes our sense of faith, optimism and generosity. It represents the philosophies we live by, what we believe in, our sense of morality, and our relationship to religious, moral, and/or spiritual dogmas.
Jupiter is about the Big Picture. Consequently, it represents our vision of the future in its broadest, if not impractical, terms. Expansion or exaggeration? Jupiter’s influence can do either, but grandiose visions need practical methods to make them a reality.
Saturn
Saturn in many ways can be thought of as the “antidote” to the function of Jupiter. While Jupiter expands our vision of the future, Saturn brings us down to Earth, encouraging us to respect the rules, establishing healthy boundaries and encouraging us to reconcile our ideals with the practical limits of Reality.
Saturn, ruler of both Capricorn & Aquarius, symbolizes all of society’s structures and hierarchies. Thus, Saturn’s placement in the birth chart reveals your relationship to the structures of society and how able you are to follow rules.
Saturn, like Neptune, represents Karma. But Saturn is Karma in the conscious sense, in that it involves how we choose to use our free will—whether choose to confront and, ideally, master the challenges we’ve inherited.
Think of Saturn as the Stern Schoolteacher: you may have hated them then, but how else would you know that 5 + 5 = 10?
Uranus
Uranus is the planet of sudden awakenings, disruption and chaos; yet its function is to catalyze Revolution—though such change often involves the acknowledgment of some, well, inconvenient truths…
Uranus represents the Future, the Unpredictable. This is why those with a strong Uranus in their birth chart often appear unpredictable, erratic, or downright off the wall. Wherever Uranus falls in your chart is the area of life where you stand out from the crowd—and where you’ll experience the most upheaval.
Like Pluto, Uranus acts like Speed, revving us up in thought & in action. But its primary symbol is Freedom & Independence, and our Individual Force of Will. Uranus acts as a metaphorical “kick in the rear,” pressing us to break away from outdated patterns, question staid traditions, take unconventional paths and, if necessary, to rebel against the established order.
Neptune
Neptune is the Cosmic Santa Claus, elusive in its action, representing Karma in its highest form. Neptune is our capacity for imagination and inspiration; however, it can lead us to Escapism and other such coping mechanisms.
Whereas Saturn is about Structure, Rules, and Reality, Neptune is about the dissolution of structure, the “gray area,” and the exceptions to such rules. Neptune is the Escapist, the Daydreamer—the eternal Desert Island Seeker.
Neptune is the “higher octave” of Jupiter. Yet Jupiter represents a conscious molding of the future through principled action, whereas Neptune symbolizes the future as seen through the lens of our dreams and fantasies.
Neptune enables us to see the best in people and in the world, but can just as easily cloud our judgment as it prompts us to overlook realities we’d rather not see.
Pluto
If Neptune is elusive, Pluto is almost unreachable in its depths. Now considered a dwarf planet, its size does not diminish its symbolism in the birth chart.
As the smallest, darkest planet furthest from the Sun, Pluto is our darkness—our deeply buried desires & drives. As the "higher octave" of Mars, Pluto represents the ambition to transform oneself—an ambition so intense that it manifests as obsessions & compulsions in the conscious mind.
Transformation is its essence, associated with the metaphor of the phoenix rising from its ashes. Speeding up the body & mind, Pluto works subtly, behind the scenes, turning our struggle for survival into a splendiferous spectacle of death and rebirth.
Those born with a focal Pluto/heavy Plutonian influences in their birth charts are born Detectives, and have extremely sharp emotional “antennae.” Pluto is the planet of Evolution, so those with a strong Pluto in their birth chart will compulsively confront (and pursue) the darkest, deepest truths, and will typically change in markedly in both appearance and personality following periods of crisis (especially true for those with tight aspects from Pluto to the natal Sun, Ascendant and/or Midheaven).