The early lesson here is usually that someone had to be sensible, and it was this child. Feeling is consequently placed under administration. Such a person is calm in an emergency, arranges the funeral, handles the paperwork, and grieves later or possibly not at all. Comfort is difficult to accept; an offer of help is met with a polite account of why it is not required. Safety is understood as being the one others depend upon, since a person in that position cannot be abandoned.
Affection is expressed through obligation honoured. The school fees are paid, the aged parent is visited every Sunday for eleven years, the promise made in 1998 is still being kept. This is love, and it is substantial, though it is frequently not recognised as love by those wanting a warmer register. Dry humour does much of the emotional work. What such a person cannot easily do is say plainly that they are frightened, or lonely, or would like someone to stay a while.
The costs are austerity and a melancholy that settles in quietly and is mistaken for realism. Pleasure is deferred, rest is negotiated with, and the standing suspicion is that affection must be earned by usefulness. From outside this looks like coldness or control. From inside it is generally a well-founded belief, formed early, that nobody was coming. Placements like this soften with age, and often the softening begins the first time the person asks for something and is simply given it.
What It Gives
- ◆unshakeable in emergency
- ◆keeps every obligation
- ◆genuine self-reliance
- ◆dry, sustaining humour
What It Costs
- ◆cannot ask for help
- ◆affection measured in usefulness
- ◆quiet, persistent melancholy
This is one line of a whole chart. The rest of it — every placement, house and aspect at once — is a birth date away.
Cast Your Birth Chart