Q. I have been troubled for some time (15 years) with complications from an illness which I had when I was 17. My digestion seems compromised and its effects are emotionally very difficult. I have been working closely with my naturopath and energetic healing for some time. I have long forgotten what it is like to feel healthy and happy. Neptune in house of health I’m sure doesn’t help. Can you see anything in my chart that could help me? Energetically and spiritually it drains my spark.

A. Neptune in or related to, the 6th House has a reputation for tricky-to-diagnose illness patterns, partly because in the same ways it represents a great sensitivity in our subtle bodies, it does the same to our physical ones. This then coincides with food and other allergies, with easy chemical overloading and with a great energetic reactivity to many things that then act out through the body. Fortunately it also means that your body also has a great fluidity, making it receptive to more positive, healing energies as well.

There is a much bigger story underneath this traditional interpretation though and here once again, we see the significance of including some of the asteroids and the images of the dark feminine in the chart.

Neptune is also conjunct your Lilith asteroid, while the Black Moon, an older sister energy, has been progressing through your 6th House since you were approximately 24(!) Both these archetypes are representative of the sacred, dark feminine and in most of us, are carriers of deep emotional distortions stemming from the denial and persecution of the feminine over ages, lifetimes and generations.

Lilith (and the Black Moon, Dark Moon, Medusa and Hecate) in family systems often reflects that many of our female ancestors were potentially very potent women but unfortunately the majority of them abdicated this potency out of social pressure and patriarchal conditioning, a form of profound personal betrayal that also betrayed the goddess in each of them, turning a life-enhancing power into a toxic, traumatised and vengeful energy system that then travels down through generations. This perpetuates emotional, psychological and sexual trauma as it travels and in your case, is a part of what your Neptune has opened you up to.

Having Pluto, the ruler of your Scorpionic 6th House, on your I.C. in the house of family tells a similar story

There is also the sense of a personal drama that played out in your parent’s relationship connected to this more ancient energy line. Lilith is on your Descendent (the cusp of your house of long term relationships!)  and is part of a grand cross that involves an opposition from her to a Saturn/Medusa conjunction on your Ascendant, bisected by an opposition between Eros and Psyche. Psyche is also conjunct Ceres, who also squares Neptune.

The strongest hits I get from this are that your Mum may have been in love with someone else but through circumstances or input from parents (the dark mother and father are represented here) was pressured to marry your father. Or that your parents are actually soul mates but due to both of them carrying a lot of unhealed energies played out an age old struggle between the sacred feminine and the patriarch, resulting in the beauty and potency of their soul connection being contaminated by these ancestral forces.

Now these scenarios may be the product of a fertile imagination but even if they are totally wrong, I’m sure you will recognise some familiar territory. I can’t help wondering, for instance, if the original onset of the illness coincided with some kind of relationship trauma? I am sure we could have an interesting conversation about your own relationship experiences.

Whatever the case, this masculine/feminine conflict manifested as some of the difficulties at your birth, but not necessarily physical ones. Certainly your introduction into this life was deeply coloured by this toxic legacy, one of the many points that you were most open to absorbing it into both subtle and physical bodies.

It is a dark story but it also has huge implications for your future, as you work through this layer of your illness. It will require some deep consistent emotionally based therapy and spiritual practices that flush out ancient psychic-emotional residues while supporting you to get to know and reclaim your very powerful sacred feminine. There is no cosmic mistake that this ancestry has landed in your lap, as your chart almost screams out how potent you could be as a Wounded Healer and as a man, a representative of the sacred marriage of masculine and feminine.

There’s no quick fixes here but there is a lot of support now and in the next 2 years available to crack this system wide open. The benevolent Jupiter has already started crossing back and forward over your Ascendant/Saturn/Medusa combination and therefore opening up all the points of the grand cross, reflecting  a series of new beginnings in your life.

The liberating Uranus is about to light up your Lilith, something that will get repeated this year and the next, while Saturn goes into your 6th House in December for a 2 year stint that should not only help resolve the issue but get you well on the way to manifesting your healers in the world.

The grace is there, go well with it!