Two Years of College German

Thoughts on persona charts and Good Bye, Lenin!

It finally happened — a book I needed to read for my profession was only available in German.

Instead of putting my two years of college German to use, though, I just let Google Lens, a free app on my phone, translate the book for me. This fall marks 20 years from fall term of my freshman year of college in 2003, so it would have taken too long to get back up to speed. I had a specific piece of information I needed to find quickly, so I just held my phone over the book and read through the phone screen.

Die innere Tafelrunde by Peter Orban and Ingrid Zinnel is the original book on persona charts. These are astrological charts cast for the first time in your life that the Sun passed over a given planet or celestial body in your natal chart, giving that planet or celestial body a conscious personality.

For example, the chart of your Mars Persona is the chart of the moment that you first experience the transit Sun conjunct natal Mars sometime in your first year of life. The Mars Persona chart then describes your approach toward aggression, assertion, and other matters associated with Mars throughout your life.

The first chapter of the book, excerpted below, talks about the general idea that we all have multiple characters inside ourselves. Orban and Zinnel draw a parallel to Multiple Personality Disorder, though they go on to say that a certain 12 inner archetypes are universal whether or not you have a mental health diagnosis. I was also reminded of Internal Family Systems therapy, which I briefly tried as a patient between 2008 and 2010, but Orban and Zinnel did not make that connection.

Astrology doesn’t really get involved until the second chapter of the book, where Orban and Zinnel draw connections between their 12 universal archetypes and the components of an astrological chart. Mercury and Venus are each given two archetypes, while the Sun, Moon, and other planets through Pluto get one each. To get to know the archetype that the Moon represents, you look at your Moon Persona chart — and so on.

Subsequent chapters of the book then focus on case studies. For example, to better understand the charitable efforts of Albert Schweitzer, you’d look at his Jupiter Persona chart. To better understand Jules Verne’s identity as a prolific writer, you’d look at his Mercury Persona chart.

I don’t see why you couldn’t calculate a persona chart for Chiron or another favorite asteroid, although it might be hard to find astrological software that would cooperate with you toward that end. Orban and Zinnel didn’t go there.

The other place Orban and Zinnel didn’t go — and I was in a hurry to get through the book to confirm this — was looking at transits to persona charts. My hunch that my book Booby Prize: An Astrological Novel covers largely unexplored ground in this regard was correct.

Even though it turned out that Google Lens could just translate any German books I truly needed to read, I still got something worthwhile from my two years of college German.

When I attended the University of Oregon, foreign films were commonly among the attractions at Bijou Art Cinemas just down the street. The German language teachers gave extra credit to students who went to the Bijou to watch whatever German movie was playing there.

Under those circumstances, I saw the 2004 movie Good Bye, Lenin! In the movie, Alex Kerner is a young man whose mother is a fanatical supporter of the East German government. She then has a heart attack and goes into a coma shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall. When she comes to several months later, her doctors warn Alex that she must be protected from any emotional shock in order to prevent another heart attack. Alex — with the aid of his sister, his co-worker, and other community members — then creates an elaborate scheme to portray to his mother that her beloved East German government is still going strong.

Perhaps Good Bye, Lenin!, which I watched for the second time earlier this week, is an important movie for the present moment. The fall of the Berlin Wall was a key manifestation of the 1989 Saturn-Neptune conjunction. (Interestingly, Pink Floyd’s album The Wall was released with Saturn square Neptune in 1979 — around the time that a key prologue scene in Good Bye, Lenin! takes place.) Currently, Saturn is in Pisces, Neptune’s sign, and this is leading into the next Saturn-Neptune conjunction at the beginning of Aries in 2026.

If we are open to letting our Neptunian ideals meet the test of Saturnian reality, we may find ourselves liberated. If we use the structure of Saturn to dig unsustainable Neptunian dreams in deeper, we may find ourselves imprisoned.

I have come back to Good Bye, Lenin! in my thoughts many times over the past several years. I discovered astrology shortly after I graduated from the University of Oregon in 2007. Right after that, Pluto, the planet of power and control, moved into Capricorn, which is my family-oriented 4th house, and it has been there ever since. Natally, I have Neptune in early Capricorn close to the IC, and that may also be relevant.

Many members of my family have very strongly held opinions concerning politics, religion, medical treatment, what other grown adults ought to eat for breakfast, and so on. They can be fanatical in the same way Alex Kerner’s mother was fanatical. This was always the case to some extent, but it really ramped up over the course of Pluto’s polarizing transit through Capricorn.

I have fantasized about giving a few of my relatives the Good Bye, Lenin! treatment — to just make some kind of environment where no one ever challenges their view of the world and arrange for them to stay there. Yes, I selfishly want peace and quiet, but I also observe that they are genuinely in pain whenever anyone disagrees with them, and I don’t like to see them suffer. I am drawn to the movie’s dream of holding up the entire Berlin Wall with your own heart to protect a loved one.

Frankly, I’m jealous of Alex Kerner. He had only one person to handle in this way, and he had everyone else helping him do it. I had multiple people I felt I had to handle in this way, tearing me in opposing directions, and I was not getting much help to do it. There were situations where I clearly could not please everyone, and I had to make some tough calls all by myself.

Ultimately, there came a situation where I made the wrong call. I had my reasons for walking away from an interest in fiction writing. I provided financial support to my parents for several years during Pluto’s Capricorn transit, and I observed literary cancel culture heading in the direction of financially destroying writers over every little thing. With my natal Scorpio Moon in the money-oriented 2nd house, perhaps I would be more attuned than others to threats of that nature.

Unfortunately, my identity as a novelist was the one Berlin Wall that another family member had really needed me to hold up for her.

On a personal and family level, the way I handled the publication of Booby Prize feels like it ruptured the fabric of the universe. On a collective level, however, the way I handled Booby Prize ultimately gave the astrological community information it did not previously have regarding the phenomenon of transits to persona charts.

Also, the essay anthology Impossible Dreams began with material cut from the preface of Booby Prize. I discovered I really enjoyed collaborating with other astrological writers in the essay anthology format, and I plan to do it again.

I think people have the right to decide, like Alex Kerner did, that the likely costs of certain family conversations outweigh any potential benefits. The messy agony of exploding someone else’s Neptunian illusions can’t be wished away, no matter how illogical an outside observer might say it is. The lows of Neptunian experience can feel just as superhuman as the highs.

If the confrontation happens, though, you may eventually wind up with the complex experience I have had — potentially life-changing good inseparable from its conception in pain.

If you have Kindle Unlimited, you might as well read Booby Prize now. If you don’t have Kindle Unlimited, wait before buying it — I’m going to add enough information to the astrology section that I’ll need to release a new edition. (The recent content improvements to Impossible Dreams did not reach the threshold of counting as a new edition.) The new edition of Booby Prize will be available in both e-book and paperback formats, hopefully in early 2024. I’ll work that in before I get the next essay anthology going.

News and opportunities

I’ve got a letter to the editor published in issue #14 of Skyscript Newsletter, responding to a piece in the previous issue by

Abigail Joy

on the topic of whether astrology should be popular.

After reading Skyscript Newsletter, I have graphics envy. The astrological charts in Impossible Dreams look like they came out of a Sega Genesis. In the context of a book stirring nostalgia for past Saturn in Pisces transits, perhaps it’s okay to have that nod to the 1990s.

Going forward, though, I would like to hire a freelance graphic designer for the new edition of Booby Prize as well as subsequent essay anthologies. I need someone who can make astrological charts that look good in both print and digital formats at 300 dpi. I also want assistance with book covers. Please email my new business address if you are interested: astrologybooks@proton.me

Today, I made some new Redbubble designs based on the slogan, “If all your friends woke up, would you?” I developed that slogan while playing with magnetic poetry sets. I think it’s marketable because it will mean different things to different people. One positive outcome of growing up around intense conflict about politics and religion is that I see people want a lot of the same things, no matter what label they identify with. Whatever your trip is, it’s more fun when your friends agree with you!

It also reminds me of a comment I made in my 2024 yearly horoscope for Tarot.com: “Over the course of this transitional year, some problems might seem to resolve, only to be replaced by new concerns. The tools and alliances that served us while Pluto was in Capricorn may no longer be what the moment requires.” Realignment of alliances will probably be huge when Pluto moves into Aquarius — I think a lot of people will wake up in one way or another, but the key is finding those who are waking up in the same way that you are.

This week’s New Moon in Sagittarius opposed my 9th house Chiron in Gemini, so that’s where a lot of this post came from!