What do we do about baby birth charts?
a little list of wonderings inspired by a baby
Cancer New Moon: I might have mis-typed at some point and suggested we were approaching the Leo New Moon. If I’ve confused you, sorry! Idk, blame Mercury, or something ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Since we will in fact be underneath a Cancer New Moon on July 5 at about 7pm ET, it’s a good time to think about that seed you’re planting in your Cancer house. What area of life does that represent? Is there anything you want to pay closer attention to in that space? Cancer is a good sign for care and protection. A sign famous for strong boundaries (emotional and literal). If you’ve already let someone over the wall who shouldn’t be there, perhaps you need to see about pushing them back outside the perimeter. A Cancer New Moon could be a good moment to do so.
Whatever you do, remember that the product of this cycle will come around the beginning of 2025. It feels ages away, but we all know by now that time is slippery, especially during the long days of summer. That shining Full Moon in Cancer will be here before you know it, so give it the attention it needs now. It’s her home sign, she deserves some care and respect.
Next week I’m going to write a longer piece about the Supreme Court’s recent decision to allow cities to outlaw being homeless. I started writing it this week and just kept butting up against the massiveness of this cruelty, the ugliness, and I realized I want to get more help from other sources, thinkers, writers, and artists before sharing any of my own thoughts.
In the meantime, not a bad idea to build your habit of logging into 5calls every day while you’re making your coffee.
Some quick notes about babies and birth charts.
For this week, I’m going to share a simpler piece about meeting a baby, loving that baby, and a little about what that experience is teaching me, both in general and about the planets.
The obvious piece was the insanity of there being this human who had been physically growing inside of my sister for the last nine months and who had been in her mind and imagination for years before that. After all this time, effort, waiting, sadness, anger, hope, and all, here was a baby. I assume this phenomena loses its capacity to shock and awe if you want it to, but I’m not sure I do. I think the shock and awe is a good sensation to preserve.
I often talk about the way that a natal chart is a representation of the moment something comes into existence. The first breath creates the chart, almost as though that person is a talisman, holding all the implications of the relationships between the planets at that moment. To me, this is the poetry of astrology that makes it meaningful, whether it is “valid” or not. Seeing her, freshly minted and deeply loved, I appreciated the concept even more.
The idea that her chart represents a moment further expanded for me when I considered how that moment looked in my own chart, in her mom’s chart, in her dad’s chart, and so on. I’m trying to say this without getting overly woo woof, not because I have a problem with woo woo, but because I want to anchor the idea, because the idea feels anchored for me. We know that when you meet a person, they’re carrying their whole history with them. This is one way to think about charts interacting. You carry all your past and I carry all my past. Your chart carries all your past and my chart carries all my past. We all carry the capacity for our futures.
We live in a moment where “trauma” is a frequently reached for word. Some would say reached for too often. It’s used to understand a lot about why people behave the way they do. That makes sense, because your trauma does manifest in your behavior. To make this point even finer, your behavior is also shaped by the trauma you’ve inherited. It’s abundant. At the same time, you carry all the other experiences with you too. The positive ones and the mundane, seemingly unimportant ones.
Seeing my niece’s chart up against the charts of her family, I was struck by the impossible complexity of all those planets bumping up against each other. It really is everything, everywhere, all at once.I’ve looked over a handful of baby’s charts over the years on behalf of parents or aunts and uncles. It’s a funny exercise, because it’s just about the only time that whatever you say can’t be fact checked. It reminds me of how my memaw would say that being a meteorologist must be nice because there’s no consequence if you’re wrong. Of course, that’s not actually true. People make big decisions based on what they hear from a meteorologist. They also build subconscious expectations. The same, surprisingly maybe, is true of a baby’s birth chart.
I think it’s because we’re all so hungry to get to know this person, to give content to the immediate, instinctual closeness we feel for them. I look at my niece’s Gemini stellium and my Gemini Moon and I can say, “Of course. We share a way of being, a spiritual or symbolic landscape. We’ll see that as she grows.” That feels good. And I’m curious about how the expectations shift and adapt over time.
It wouldn’t matter if I wasn’t into astrology. We’d find plenty of cues to build expectations. If she wiggles a bunch, someone will call her a dancer. If she makes funny noises, she’s a singer. Strong grip? Weightlifter. It’s not so different from plotting the planets and wondering. In either case, all we can do, I think, is remain open to surprise. That’s the most fun part about being an astrologer and it’s an attitude I’m hoping to maintain as my niece continues to become herself.
Life teaches us about the birth chart, not the other way around.
Always a lot of credit goes to the people who have been my teachers, both directly and through their freely shared knowledge, and so many books.