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Overview
In this eye-opening volume, world-famous astrologer and therapist Donna Cunningham unravels the often bewildering effects of lunar influence: a person’s potential for intimacy, sense of security, family ties, susceptibility to indulgence in food or drink, career ambition, as well as how men and women respond differently to the same lunar promptings in love and life.
Cunningham provides all the information you need to determine your own and others’ Moon signs—and analyze their power. Moon Signs also charts the daily, monthly, and yearly courses of the moon, which create those predictable mood swings—our “emotional weather.”
The time-honored tradition of astrology has come into its own as a resource for human development and spiritual insight. For astrological novices and veterans alike, Cunningham’s invaluable guide will pave the way to a more profound understanding of the uncharted and sometimes dark side of the soul.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780307775047 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Random House Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 12/08/2010 |
| Sold by: | Random House |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 512 |
| Sales rank: | 786,007 |
| File size: | 37 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
INTRODUCTION
That Old Devil Moon
This is the first book in recent years for the general reader that deals with the astrological and psychological nature of the Moon. Most popular astrology books are about your Sun sign, and while that’s a strong and valid part of you, the Moon is equally important. The Moon sign is the missing dimension in Sun sign astrology, a reason why some people swear astrology doesn’t work. They read descriptions of their Sun sign and say “I’m just not like that.” Others, more favorably inclined, admit it works for certain people, yet have to stretch to make it fit themselves.
What’s the mysterious element in some people, the indefinable something that makes them different from others of the same sign? Everyone says you can’t rely on Geminis, yet don’t you know some who are the Rock of Gibraltar? Haven’t you wondered why some Cancers are clinging and others aren’t? Or why some Pisces are drugged out of their minds and others are so clear and present? What about the Virgos whose houses are pigsties? Or the Capricorns who are shiftless and unreliable?
Maybe you, too, have been puzzled by some blatant contradictions in Sun sign traits. One reason is that the Sun sign only gives part of the picture. The Moon sign can be as characteristic of the person as the Sun. As a matter of fact, some Moons are so strong, they override the Sun—especially Scorpio, Capricorn, and Pisces Moons. Any two people born on May 10 will have the same Sun sign—Taurus—but unless they’re born the same year, their chances of having the same Moon are only one in twelve. Thus, there are twelve brands of Taurus out there, as well as twelve brands of Leo, and twelve brands of each of the twelve signs.
Astrologically the Moon represents a number of very important facets of the personality, describing your emotional nature and moods, as well as what you need to maintain that all-important feeling of security. Simple tables will give you the Moon signs of yourself, your friends and family, and anyone else you need to understand better. We’ll be looking at the astrological implications of the Moon’s sign when you were born and what it says about your character.
The Moon Sign and Emotions
Even though this book is about the Moon, it’s really about emotions, and most of us could use some insight into this area. Living in a mechanized, high-pressure world, we become divorced from our feelings, at the cost of much emotional pain and self-defeating behavior. Some of us spend a great deal of money on therapists, who guide us in exploring our buried emotions and the reasons we keep acting in predictable, self-destructive patterns. Not that therapy doesn’t help, or that this book will replace therapy for those who really need it, but your Moon sign can provide valuable insights into less conscious parts of yourself, serving as a guidebook to the dark side of your Moon. So, even though the book is about astrology, it’s really about you and how you deal with these mysterious and ever-changing emotional responses.
If you take a look at the biggest mistakes of your life, many of them happen when you’re not paying attention to your real feelings and needs—or worse, when you’re trying to override your gut responses and ignore your instincts. Since all these areas—feelings, needs, instincts, and responses—are connected with the Moon sign, you often make the biggest mistakes of your life when you’re ignoring the Moon.
Some people who ignored their own or key people’s Moon signs made big mistakes … and big headlines. If Mary Beth Whitehead had paid attention to the strongly maternal qualities of her Cancer Moon, she’d never have signed away Baby M in the first place. If Joan Crawford had been more conscious of the warlike qualities of her daughter Christina’s Aries Moon, she might not have made the mistake of writing Christina out of her will, and Mommie Dearest might never have been published. Perhaps assassinated San Francisco mayor George Moscone would still be with us today if he’d known Dan White’s Moon in Scorpio could make him react so vindictively to being fired. How about you? Have you made some big mistakes? Perhaps as you come to know your Moon sign, you can avoid repeating them.
Not only does the Moon sign describe your predominant emotional reactions and how you deal with them, it also shows your immediate, instinctive responses to crises, which are predominantly emotional and unconscious in nature. Thus, the Moon sign represents complex parts of the personality that are extremely important to understand, precisely because they are less conscious than the Sun. You learned the characteristics related to your Moon sign in your mother’s arms, so early you can’t remember or verbalize them, certainly before you left the family circle to start school. Thus, your Moon sign has much to do with the kind of mother you had and what parts of your own nature and reaction patterns you learned from her. Since we live what we learn, it also shows what kind of parent you would be.
The Moon and Your Emotional Needs
Likewise, knowledge of the Moon sign you were born under can give you insight into your own personal emotional needs. What are your needs? Many of us don’t really know what they are; we just know they’re not being met. We live in a world that is no longer organized to nurture people. Once it was a little easier—the whole family tended to be close by, so if Mom couldn’t take care of you, an aunt, grandmother, or cousin could pick up the slack. Today there are fewer nurturing institutions and more complex pressures and demands.
The most basic needs are shown by the birth Moon sign—including what you need to feel emotionally fulfilled, secure, and nurtured. Your Moon sign is a guide to your own personal needs—what they are, and how to meet them. Although some needs may be universal, we don’t all need or want the same things. There are very different sets of needs, based on the Moon sign at birth. For instance, Aquarius Moons need space and freedom, feeling confined by close family attachments, while Cancer Moons desperately need that connection to their roots. Virgo Moons need the comfort of predictable routines, while Gemini Moons need constant change.
It’s essential to learn to recognize, respect, and meet your own needs, for if you don’t take care of them, you wind up feeling needy and unfulfilled. As the sense of deprivation builds up, you may find yourself struggling with your weight. The Moon has to do with all forms of nurturance, and food is a very basic and primal form of nurturance. If you don’t pay attention to the needs and feelings of your own Moon sign, you may wind up stuffing your face.
Ignoring your needs can also have a profound effect on your relationships. You may wind up twisting your relationships by depending too much on others to meet your needs. Or you may become resentful that your lover or mate doesn’t read your mind and meet your needs without your having to ask—even though you yourself aren’t at all clear what they are. When two lovers or friends have very conflicting sets of needs, the conflict can be lessened once they understand that the two Moon signs involved are different and need equal time. Being more conscious of the nature of both Moon signs can help the pair allow that both sets of needs are taken into account.
Ignore the Moon at Your Own Risk
In the long run, the Moon cannot be ignored: needs too long denied, feelings too long buried, insecurities perpetually pushed aside, all eventually fester and can ultimately build up to a kind of crisis we’ll later describe as lunar burnout. Essentially this is a kind of breakdown in which you are so drained from giving to others and ignoring your own needs that life’s demands become too much for you. You wind up going off the deep end when the Moon is full. Or since the Moon is astrologically connected with the menstrual cycle, women whose needs are ignored too long may suffer from a bad case of premenstrual syndrome.
This book, with its Moon sign tables and Moon descriptions, can help you prevent lunar burnout and keep you from baying at the Full Moon. The Moon sign descriptions will enable you to recognize your emotional needs and the emotional needs of others important to you—mate, children, friends, boss. Throughout this book, but especially in the final chapter, you’ll learn more about your needs and how to meet them.
The Moon is important to everyone, but especially to lunar types. These are people who are inherently more sensitive to the Moon and its daily fluctuations as well as more invested in the areas of life governed by the Moon. Lunar types include Cancerians—popularly called Moon Children—along with those born at the Full and New Moon. The United States, with its July 4 birthday, is a Cancerian nation, so the lunar areas of home, family, roots, and security have traditionally been important to Americans. That these areas of life have changed so drastically in the course of the twentieth century has been a source of pain for all lunar types.
Remember, the Moon is not negative, even though we’ve been pressured to ignore it in favor of being rational and productive. Paying attention to your own natural rhythms and cycles, as you’ll learn to do in this book, can make your life easier and even increase your productivity. When rightly handled, the Moon sign can even be the source of your greatness. Again and again, with the famous people we’ll be using as examples, you can see the abilities and qualities they are remembered for much more in their Moon signs than in their Sun signs.