All the zodiac signs are karmic but whenever we talk about karmic relationships or karmic events we usually describe them in terms of Scorpio or Pisces. And yet ones Moon sign is a central theme pointing to an individual’s past. The Moon rules the Cancer zodiac sign. Whether, Cancer, Scorpio or Pisces, all the zodiac’s water signs, water is where we feel karma. The sense that something just happened that has happened before. Something is pushing us toward someone or something. Intuitive knowing.
How do we connect to something that is not apparent? Something primeval. Go back to the beginning and then go back further and then try to squint and see more, if you can. The Moon is mother, Pluto is grandmother and Neptune is all-mother.
Us Two, Cancer’s Mother & Child
The Cancer zodiac sign is ruled by the Moon and its natural house is the fourth house. Mothers, infants, emotions, home, milk, breasts. Cardinal water. Motivation and feeling.
Mother in this context is connection to something from before. The most immediate connection is your mother. You aren’t born alone out of nothing. The woman with you takes care of you and you belong. This is understandable because we can see gestation and childbirth in the material world. If all of that happened in secret to us, we would probably describe our relationship to our mother in the same mystical way we describe romantic relationship. Soulmates. In fact, synastry and planetary transits show that most everyone of any importance and quite a few of very little importance are all soulmates to us.
So that is your beginning. Your mother and you. Where did you come from? Your mother, your first soulmate. The debate of nature versus nurture is not something your mother usually takes a chance on. She provides one half of the nature and most of the nurture.
The Pisces Moon chart has a threefold description of the Cancer and Pisces archetype. Restating the archetype three times means this isn’t a minor theme. Pisces Moon, Cancer twelfth house cusp, retrograde Neptune in the fourth house. Pisces is loss, shipwreck, altered reality, delusion, fantasy. Cancer is mother, home, infant, emotions. So we have lost mother. Mother shipwreck. Retrograde has the meaning of past. Past delusion at home.
My husband’s chart has a Pisces Moon. His mother was adopted and then raised by an alchoholic. She has a Libra Sun conjunct Neptune. As an adult, she later found that her biological parents had married. She found her father but, mere months before, her mother had disappeared and was never found. The Pisces Moon mother joined a religious cult in the late 1970s and raised all of her children in it. Forty years later, the Pisces Moon mother was lost to her choice to shun him when he left the cult. She gains a great deal of attention from the religious congregation.
The immediate karma is the lost mother. Pisces is loss. Moon the mother. She once told him, after we had been married many years, she was afraid that I would take him out of the religion. I was indignant at the time as I was a believer while he didn’t know if God existed. She was right to fear it though because I woke up, realized it was a cult, and left. He had the option to stay or go but knew it would be a lot of pressure on him from the group to divorce, if he stayed so he left. She had a feeling of the end even when no one could see it. That was an intuitive understanding of karma.
It is Cancer’s archetype that will tell you about your most immediate individual karma. Your recent past lives are found in the Cancer archetype.
Us Five, Scorpio’s Five Generations
The Scorpio zodiac sign is ruled by Pluto and its natural house is the eighth house. Grandparents, grandchildren, emotional residue, death, debt, inheritance. Fixed water. Fixation and feeling.
So why is Scorpio or Pluto associated with grandmothers? Each family line extends from a longer chain of mothers. It is not just that you are born with your mother soulmate but that she was born in the same way. Pluto’s inheritance and rebirth.
Your maternal grandmother is even more special than the other members of that generation in your family tree. She is your first mother in a sense. When your mother was in your grandmother’s womb, she made all of her eggs including your egg. That means that half of you originates all the way back to the time when your grandmother was four month’s pregnant with your mother. In my case, that would have been December 1947-January 1948. This mystery gets to the essential nature of Scorpio. Generational inheritance for good or ill. In contrast, your father’s sperm was made about a month or month and a half before your conception. This gives a lot of time for individual karma to influence the process of your arrival into the world.
It also means that the generations are deeply connected. If you are a mother to a female lineage, her children were all part of your pregnancy. You have this connection with your grandmother and your daughter’s children. Each maternal grandmother physically connects five generations. A paternal grandmother connects four.
Generational Curse. Can these exist? It appears they can and may even come from an actual curse. The political Kennedy Family has a distinctive astrological mechanism shown in the Kennedy-Fitzgerald marriage chart that seems to root each member into the blessings and curses that are seen by the public. In this instance, the curse originates from Rose Fitzgerald. That is not the end of the story though. Jacqueline Kennedy has brought misfortune too and Carolyn Bessette the same. No matter how it looks today in modern charts, there is something deeper. The Kennedy Curse is of Neptune and Pisces. It spans much more than five generations and its origin is misted and unseen swirling about from the past. It probably is the result of Owain ap Cadwgan cursing Gerald of Windsor with his dying breath after Gerald had stabbed him. And Gerald is the progenitor of the Norman-Irish family of Fitzgerald.
In 1951, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy was honored by Pope Pius XII and granted the title Countess of the Holy Roman Church. She attended mass daily and tried in her words to raise a great son or daughter. Meanwhile, her husband was a notorious philanderer who was in reality a disappointment as a person although a successful businessman. People do the best they can but Joe Kennedy was a Virgo Sun-Moon who devoted himself to the negative version of virtue; vice. It appears that whenever he had a moral choice to take a high road, he was naturally attacted to the low road or even to climbing into the ditch to slither on his belly. He betrayed Rose when he conducted an affair with Gloria Swanson, even subjecting his wife to his mistress’ presence, and then betrayed Gloria by using her own money to buy her extravagant gifts that she believed came from him. He was a notorious coward who wanted to appease Hitler and probably sympathized with the Nazi cause as well.
Maria Shriver is the daughter of Eunice Kennedy Shriver who demostrated a high degree of virtue in her life especially in starting the Special Olympics. The sister of the Democrat President John F. Kennedy, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Republican President Ronald Reagan for her work. Eunice was a Cancer Sun who had Pallas, Mars, Mercury and Pluto in Cancer and the asteroid Orestes in the fourth house loosely conjunct her IC and tightly sextile her Virgo Moon in the second house. Eunice’s Cancer Sun points to her mother, Rose. She devoted much of her life to charity and not just appearances but the work to create opportunity for special needs children. A Cancer Sun is the state of an individual’s shining light being in the shade of her mother. Her daughter Maria Shriver is a Scorpio Sun and that points to her grandmother, Rose. A Scorpio Sun is the state of an individual’s shining light being in the shade of their grandmother. Her recollection was that her grandmother was one to quiz the grandchildren on grammar and math.
Maria Shriver is now a grandmother to several grandchildren. Her daughter Katherine Pratt has two daughters. In 2024, for Mother’s day they partnered to produce “The Grandmother Project” exploring the role of grandmother in other families. Maria has a Leo Pluto conjunct Jupiter. Jupiter is the planet of quests and seeking the aristocratic grandmother has been present in her life since her birth. Maria’s Taurus Ascendant is ruled by her Capricorn Ceres in the ninth house which is probably close to Rose’s Ascendant. Taurus is the heir. As the heir to Rose, she was the First Lady of California when she was married to Arnold Schwarzeneggar. Rose was often the woman her own father Honey Fitz Fitzgerald used to help him on his own political campaigns.
In January-February 1921, Rose Kennedy was preparing to give birth to her fifth child, Eunice. It was during that time that Maria’s egg was formed. The year before, at eight months pregnant with Kathleen, Rose had left Joe for his cheating and returned to her father who told her divorce was not an option. She returned to Joe and the next year was pregnant again. Her Catholic faith was a central tenet to Rose. Maria is the only daughter of Eunice who is in turn the oldest daughter to have a daughter. Eunice was born out of religious duty and she embodied her mother’s training to be virtuous in stark contrast to her father.
Through Maria’s oldest daughter, Katherine, Maria is now the grandmother to Lyla & Eloise Pratt. Katherine is a Sagittarius Sun ruled by a retrograde Cancer Jupiter. Her mother’s quest has formed her beliefs. Rose is fading now in the family to be overtaken by her descendants but in her great-granddaughter, Katherine, we see Rose’s beliefs still on display and Lyla Pratt’s Leo Sun is loosely conjunct Maria Shriver’s Leo Moon, representing Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Lyla is tuned to Eunice. Following the Scorpionic rebirth and inheritance flow through this family, you can see how an ancestress from generations ago can become central to children who might never even know their name. Rose Kennedy’s decision to remain with her husband based on her religious upbringing and father’s discipline leads directly to the birth of Eunice, the Special Olympics and in turn flows down to the young infant Lyla where she has faded entirely as an individual and instead been reborn through the Scorpionic inheritance she left Eunice and Maria. For good or ill, we leave something behind. The alcoholic grandmother, the charitable grandfather, the foolish grandfather and the hardworking grandmother don’t disappear when they die they leave a generational inheritance.
It is Scorpio’s archetype that will tell you about your generational karma and the karma you will likely see in your grandchildren. The karma of your family line can wallop you or propel you.
Us, Pisces All Generations
The Pisces zodiac sign is ruled by Neptune and its natural house is the twelfth house. All-mother, the vastness of the sea, karmic emotion, shipwreck, allness, oneness, delusion, fantasy. Mutable water. Flowing and feeling.
Karma is Pisces. Everything that is not resolved is swept into the great sea. The vastness of space. In the prior two water zodiac signs, we can see how one individual influences and shapes another individual’s karma. Soulmates are known and are directly involved in shaping the life of the other person.
Pisces is more elusive. Influences that are unknown or poorly known. There are photos of Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, personal records and videos of people who knew her talking about who she was. Through astrology, we saw across the generations in her family how she influenced each generation. At first directly with her daughter and then indirectly to her great-granddaughter, Katherine, until she was only seen as the faint reflection through her daughter Eunice in her great-great granddaughter Lyla. Pisces takes over at this point. One day, Lyla may very well teach her own grandchildren something that came from Rose and never know where it came from. Rose also learned and had an inheritance from further back in time that she transmitted forward. All of this is Pisces, the unknown influences.
Thomas Jefferson was the third President of the United States. He has an unusual Y-chromosome. It is from the Middle East but has been found in England in a few men with the name Jefferson or a variant. Jefferson had known legitimate children from his wife, Martha Wayles and probable illegitimate children with her half-sister and slave, Sally Hemmings. Sally was the daughter of an enslaved woman born around 1735, Elizabeth “Betty” Hemmings, whose own father was probably white. Sally’s father was John Wayles, the plantation owner. Historians speculate that the Eppes family had two slave women whose name are reused in the Hemmings family and the original slave woman might have been one of these named Parthenia or Sarah. The family was owned by the Eppes family, then the Wayles family and then the Jefferson family. Thomas Jeffereson freed the children of Sally Hemmings or facilitated their running away while also not seeking them. These children mostly blended into white society and DNA has proven the youngest son carried the Jefferson Y-chromosome of the Jefferson male line.
Sally Hemmings had a daughter named Harriet who disappears into the white society of Washington D.C. and later Maryland. She has never been found but she is reported to have married and had children. Jefferson noted she was born in May 1801. Harriet’s birthday is unknown but we can still deduce some information about her past from the zodiac sign of Pluto and Neptune.
Born into slavery, Harriet Hemmings was the daughter of plantation owners. Her father penned the Declaration of Independence. A retrograde Scorpio Neptune square a Leo Saturn. A Pisces Pluto. It is written twice and maybe Scorpio was on the cusp of her twelfth house for good measure, we will probably never know. The secret karma. The past enslavement. All had to be kept secret. All had to disappear. It all had to be hush, hush or even better gone.
Her ancient past, Neptune, blocked her aristocratic father and master. Jefferson had only one enslaved daughter all the rest of Sally’s surviving children were men. At age 21, Jefferson had his overseer give her $50 (a very considerable sum in those days) put her into a coach heading for the capital and sent her to her brother who had “run” before her. She didn’t need to be freed, the slave girl Harriet needed to disappear entirely. She was meant for better things. Although we have no way to know, I think she might have been born when Jupiter had transited into Leo. Her journey to the capital, her father’s world. She was leaving her Cancerian mother. Harriet was escaping her karmic history of slavery, retrograde Scorpio Neptune, sand entering her father’s world. Although we don’t know what else he might have done, Washington was a place he could have aided her or her husband.
This takes us to Thomas Jefferson himself. With his Y-chromosome, who was his distant ancestor and father? How did a Middle Eastern Y-chromosome only shared down the male line get to the tiny village of Pettistree, England whence it came to Virginia. Did a female slave or captive escape to England carrying a male child of a Saracen from a Crusade? Or was it a Phoenician trader family who made it to northern Europe? The Hemmings have family lore that they were the descendants of a white sea captain named Hemmings which is a common story told in Virginia about how children had mixed heritage. It was a different world and bastard children enslaved by the master and father was still a scandal in polite society.
Jefferson had a Cancer Neptune that was wounded. He also had a retrograde Scorpio Pluto conjunct his south node. The man had a clear wound that had come from his deeper past. He also had a nodal journey that he would move from shared resources to personal wealth. As a Scorpio south node, he consumed wealth and produced debt. This is a necessary mechanism that breaks up the fixed nature of earth and allows the recirculation of resources. Monticello was bankrupt at his death.
His daughters would have been the Taurus Venus in his horoscope. Women of means. His Leo Mars is conjunct her Leo Saturn. He was motivated to push her to the capital to a better life.
Pisces is when you step back and look at the facts and the facts usually clear the mist. Thomas Jefferson was born to the aristocratic planter class, he was well educated and had high ideals who carried on a long lasting relationship with an enslaved woman. He trained and freed their children and helped them escape enslavement and pushed them from his plantation to a new place where they had a better life. That is the story. His K2 Y-chromosome leads me to believe he was re-enacting his own origin story. Helping his enslaved child escape to a free life. That is how a K2 chromosome comes to be in England when it should be in the Middle East.
It is Pisces’ archetype that will tell you about your ancestral karma and abiding nature of your story. The karma of your distant past.