Q. I seem to have left all my spiritual beliefs behind in the quest for happiness in my relationships with my husband and adopted son. Of course happiness eludes me most of the time. Does my chart show any way out of my victim mentality and anal retentive Virgoness.

A. As you are finding out, this is never a good scenario as any important part of self rejected or abandoned will come around to bite you somehow.

You are in quite a bind, that much is obvious and so much so looking at your chart. Having multiple planets in Virgo, all in the House of Service and a super-strong Saturn on the Midheaven in Capricorn, the cards appear stacked in favour of a ghastly emphasis on duty and responsibility. It is however not the only expression of this combination but it is one that colludes with some much deeper and distorted forces.

Anyone with a Virgo and/or 6th House emphasis has to struggle with the difference between subservience and being of true service from a position of personal power. Virgo is a brilliant, intelligent and profoundly deep energy at its core but seems haunted by feelings of low self-esteem and inadequacy that makes its too open to being seduced into states of servitude, however subtle.

Your Sun is conjunct Pluto, a position that reinforces this extraordinary depth of potency within you but in our culture the transformative power of this Shiva/Kali planet tends to become severe forms of control, to fend off the threat of owning one’s true power and allowing oneself to be deeply changed from within. This control easily transfers into attachment to established notions of culturally validated responsibility and duty (i.e. the “good” sacrificing mother and partner) as a form of security.

Fortunately transiting Neptune is in the process of opposing your natal Pluto, something that was initiated at the last eclipse in late May and will continue on and off for the next 2 years. This will progressively unravel these control dynamics, while opening you your plutonian power and the deep fertile earth of Virgo. At these depths she is most definitely not a push-over! May the force be with you!

Similarly transiting Chiron is now opposing your Sun also from Pisces, to put the pressure on you to get stuck into your own healing processes and to encourage you, like Neptune, to practice letting go and trusting your body, your right brain, your intuition more. Both are coming from your 12th House, the house of mysticism, the unconscious and the dreaming, so as things unravel you will be able to regain your connection to your spirituality, in practice, not just in terms of belief. This will go leaps and bounds as Chiron opens up your South Node in the next years, that treasure trove of past-life skills and gifts.

As for handing over any part of yourself for the sake of relationship, this is a recipe for unhappiness and eventual disaster. And this appears to be a generational family pattern, as the Black Moon is in Cancer on the cusp of the 4th House, the house of family, home and ancestors. On its own this can describe a family system full of very powerful women connected to their own juice and to the Great Mother. Oppositions to an overpowering Saturn though describe the suppression of this feminine potency over generations.

The Black Moon is connected to Kali, Lilith and a host of other dark goddesses who, when dishonoured, become demonic energies that will undermine an individual’s potency and sabotage even the best of relationships. When a person abdicates any powerful part of herself, it is also a betrayal of this sacred feminine within, adding to the trauma. Some of the classic symptoms of this include depressions, lack of energy, intimacy issues and a great deal of inner toxicity fuelled by rage and grief.

The good news is that this part of you, so innately full of Shakti or spiritual power, is being opened up simultaneously by transiting Pluto, Uranus and Chiron in the same two year period, processes that can and will profoundly change your life, alter these relationship dynamics and even get you an empowering job or professional opportunity to break open the patterning.

Even in the short term Jupiter will conjunct your Black Moon in August/September to make your more aware of this part of you that longs to be free of the same shackles. There’s a lot of work to do here, obviously, but the support and grace is just as clearly there as well.