Planetary Keywords Flashcards
Sun Keywords
Center of vital creative energy, the will to exist, the impulse tobe, to manifest, to be active, to be central, to radiate, to “shine,” to rise above, to achieve; one’s basic energy drive, individual self-directedness and self-expression, conscious selfhood, personal identity and will; egotism, narcissism, hyperindividualism, inadequate relationality; the Jungian animus, Chinese yang, the solar masculine and solar feminine, the archetypal Hero, all solar deities.
Moon Keywords
Moods and feelings, changeable and fluctuating in character, though also deeply imprinted enduring emotional patterns; all relationships, the maternal, parental, familial, the domestic life, the home, community; the emotionally and instinctively responsive personality, the psychosomatic foundation of the self, the womb and ground of life, the early mother-child relationship, the underlying psychological character, the parts of oneself that are more hidden to one’s conscious ego; one’s sense of belonging (or not), rooted in early childhood experience; the body and the soul, that which feels, senses, and intuits; the impulse to gestate and bring forth, receive and reflect, relate and respond, to need and to care, dependence and interdependence; moodiness, dependency, inadequate self-reflective consciousness; lack of differentiation, autonomy, or individuation; the unconscious and the diffusely conscious, the Jungian anima,
the Chinese yin; the Great Mother Goddess, together with aspects of the Child, the relational matrix of life, Luna and all lunar deities.
Mercury Keywords
Mind, thinking, mental and neural activity, giving and receiving information, movement of ideas through speaking, writing, and other forms of communication; the impulse and capacity to use words and language, to conceptualize and articulate, to analyze and comprehend, learn, perceive through the senses (see, hear, etc.), to mediate, transport, connect; the principle of Logos; the Greek messenger of the gods Hermes, the Roman Mercury.
Venus Keywords
Desire, love, beauty, value, art; the impulse and capacity to attract and be attracted, to love and be loved, to seek and create beauty and harmony, to engage in social and romantic relations, sensuous pleasure, artistic and aesthetic experience and creation; the principle of Eros and the Beautiful; Greek goddess of love and beauty Aphrodite, the Roman Venus.
Mars Keywords
Energetic force; the impulse and capacity to assert one’s will, to act and move energetically and forcefully, to have an impact, to press forward and against, to defend and offend, to act with sharpness and ardor; the tendency to experience aggressiveness, anger, conflict, harm, violence, forceful physical energy; to be combative, competitive, courageous, vigorous, ardent; the Greek god of war Ares, the Roman Mars.
Jupiter Keywords
Expansion and magnitude, fullness, growth and progress, elevation and ascendancy, breadth and height, success and good fortune, honor and recognition, abundance, well-being, happiness, pride, confidence, aggrandizement, inflation and excess, broadening horizons, larger wholes, greater understanding and meaning, philosophy and concern with moral principle, higher education, high culture; the Greek god Zeus, king of Olympus, the Roman Jupiter.
Saturn Keywords
Limit, structure, solidity and stability, contraction, constraint, necessity, hard materiality, concrete manifestation; time, the past, tradition, conservative and strict authority, age, maturity, mortality, the endings of things; weightiness, that which burdens, binds, challenges, fortifies; the tendency to restrict, hold back, separate, negate and oppose, to strengthen and forge through tension and resistance, to rigidify, to repress, to experience difficulty, problems, decline, deprivation, defeat, loss; the labor of life, age, the weight of the past, the workings of fate, character, karma, the consequences of past action, pessimism, melancholy; the impulse and capacity for discipline and duty, order, solitude, concentration, conciseness, thoroughness and precision, patience, endurance, responsibility, seriousness, wisdom; the harvest of time, effort, and experience; efficiency, law, judgment, the superego; the skeleton, bones, teeth, knees, spine; the dark, cold, heavy, dense, dry, old, slow, distant; the senex, the crone, the Greek god Kronos, the stern father of the gods, the Roman Saturn.
Uranus Keywords
Sudden change, sudden opening and awakening, inventiveness and creative breakthrough, brilliance, breakthrough, rebellion against constraints and the status quo, freedom, erraticness, eccentricity, instability, unpredictability, technological advance, electricity, impulse towards novelty and the new, the unexpected and disruptive, creative-rebel-trickster energy; the Greek sky god Ouranos, and Prometheus, the titan who rebelled against the gods, stole fire from heaven, and freed humankind.
Neptune Keywords
The transcendent, spiritual, ideal, symbolic, and imaginative dimensions of life; the subtle, intangible, and invisible; the unitive, timeless, immaterial, and infinite; all that transcends the limited literal temporal and material world of concretely empirical reality: myth and religion, art and inspiration, ideals and aspirations, images and reflections, symbols and metaphors, dreams and visions, mysticism, religious devotion, universal compassion; healing and wholeness; the longing for the beyond, the dissolution of ego boundaries and reality structures, states of psychological fusion, physical and psychological permeability and sensitivity; tendencies towards illusion and delusion, deception and self-deception, escapism, disorganization and dissolution, intoxication, addiction, perceptual and cognitive distortions, projection, fantasy, maya; all non-ordinary states of consciousness; the stream of consciousness and the oceanic depths of the unconscious; all deities of mystical union, universal love, transcendent beauty, artistic and spiritual inspiration (the all-encompassing Goddess, Christ, Mary, the Buddha, Brahman, Orpheus, the Muses, the cosmic Sophia, Narcissus absorbed in his own reflection; the Greek god Poseidon and Roman god Neptune in their symbolic association with water, the sea, the ocean, streams and rivers, mists and fogs, and by extrapolation to liquidity and dissolution, the amniotic and prenatal, the permeable and undifferentiated, the cleansing waters of purity and healing, melted ecstasy, the oceanic feeling.
Pluto Keywords
Elemental power, depth, and intensity; that which compels, empowers, and intensifies whatever it touches, sometimes to overwhelming and catastrophic extremes; concern with survival, sex, or power, the lower chakras; the primordial instincts, libidinal and aggressive, destructive and regenerative, volcanic and cathartic, eliminative, transformative, ever-evolving; the biological processes of birth, sex, and death, the cycle of death and rebirth; upheaval, breakdown, decay, and fertilization; violent purgatorial discharge of pent-up energies, purifying fire; situations of life-and-death extremes, power struggles, all that is titanic, potent, and massive; Freud’s primordial id, “the broiling cauldron of the instincts,” Darwin’s ever-evolving nature and the biological struggle for existence, Nietzsche’s Dionysian principle and the will to power, Schopenhauer’s blind striving universal will, the powerful forces of nature emerging from its chthonic depths, within and without, the intense, fiery underworld and underground in all senses: elemental, geological, instinctual, political, social, sexual, urban, criminal, mythological, demonic; the dark, mysterious, taboo, and often terrifying reality that lurks beneath the surface of things, beneath the ego, societal conventions, and the veneer of civilization, beneath the surface of the Earth, that is periodically unleashed with destructive and transformative force; myths of descent, transformation, and resurrection; deities of destruction and regeneration, death and rebirth: Dionysus, Hades and Persephone, Pan, Medusa, Lilith, Innana, the volcano goddess Pele, Quetzalcoatl, the Serpent power, Kundalini, Shiva, Shakti, Kali, Hades, Pluto.
