Once you have looked at your money and power points and corrected any problems, you can enhance your luck in the following ways:

• For the money point, cut out Chinese money writing. Mat and frame it with one of your lucky star colors, and hang it at the money point of your personal work space. If you work at a desk in an open area with no partitions, place the lucky money talisman on the upper-left-hand side of your desk. If your desktop is covered with glass, place the talisman, unframed, underneath the glass.

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If you happen to fall under the spell of Libra, don’t surrender too quickly. Let them flirt with you for a while. Even if they push towards a relationship, imagine that it’s just the scales tipping to compensate for your cooler attitude. Libra has so much fun pursuing relationships that they will love you for dragging out the anticipation. Read the rest of this entry »

Rabbit Husband + Rat Wife

The Rat is sociable, active and crafty. The Rabbit has a mild disposition and is not inclined to strenuous activity and involvement like his gregarious and entertaining wife. But both love home life and are realistic about their goals. She can be devoted and outgoing enough to brighten up his moods. A responsible and good match. Read the rest of this entry »

Tiger Husband + Rat Wife

Not much togetherness in this marriage. He is too hotheaded and imperious for the domesticated and sentimental Rat. She can be considerate and thoughtful only when appreciated and he is too impatient and involved with himself. He finds her petty and too possessive and demanding. Both parties will be dissatisfied with the other’s performance. Read the rest of this entry »

Solar returns

Solar returns are also sometimes known as solar return directions, and they are a form of transit, so they can be read in much the same way as any other list of transits. I think these are easiest to interpret when they are read as a stand-alone chart, rather than being put against a natal chart. Please try both methods for yourself before you make up your mind.

A solar return is arrived at by taking the Sun back to the exact spot that it occupied at the time of a subject’s birth. This usually happens on the subject’s birthday but it can occur a day before or afterwards. In plain English, it shows where the planets actually are in the sky at the time of the Sun’s return, and this is, of course, a picture of the transits at the moment that the Sun returns to its natal position. Read the rest of this entry »

Scorpios are drawn to the religious and austere professions. Many ministers, priests and nuns have a great deal of Scorpio influence in their chart. However, they can also use these professions to cloak their deeply passionate and sexual natures which they sometimes find disturbing. Passion and anger can be all-too-comfortable bedfellows with guilt and self-loathing — watch that you don’t curl that sting back on yourself. Read the rest of this entry »

Ox Husband + Rat Wife

He is always dependable enough to bring home the bacon and she is loving and doting enough to cook it just the way he likes it. Very satisfying and rewarding union. He is strong and silent and loves being fussed over and admired by his outgoing wife and she is content with the security and stability he provides. Both will have few complaints. Read the rest of this entry »

Rat Husband + Rat Wife

A bit too much togetherness. They may both be too conscientious and domesticated. When they are too alike, they could suffer from overexposure to each other’s personality. Mr. Rat could be more easygoing than Mrs. Rat here, who may have an inclination to be fussy and bossy. Two worldly and calculating signs who may watch each other rather intently and not like the close-up picture they see. Read the rest of this entry »

Chinese Horoscope Rat: Born with Scorpio: Water + Positive Water

A scheming, intense and fantastically potent Rat. The Rat is competitive by nature, and here Scorpio will strengthen his will power and avarice. Efficiency is at top level here. Starched aprons for the lady Scorpio Rats and overalls for her male counterparts, as both signs in this combination are hard-working and productive, although the Scorpion is less verbose. If he had the power, he would not hesitate to wipe out his adversaries with the stroke of a pen. A good writer but an even better politician. Read the rest of this entry »

Capricorns seem to grow young, rather than old. They are born thirty, and spend their youth and early twenties growing their body into its rightful age.

To be truthful, they would love to have skipped all those tiresome early years, having to be friends with immature brats and having no control over their destiny. The teenage years are especially painful for a Capricorn — rebellion holds no sway with her; she just wants to get out of school, so she can start earning a wage and take some control over her life. Read the rest of this entry »

Aquarius at work

You will find Aquarius doing whatever they can to differentiate themselves from the crowd, and if that means swallowing light bulbs for a living, then so be it. Actors, dancers, artists, transvestites, fashion designers, writers — anywhere out there on the fringes is where you’ll find Aquarius.

Aquarians have a great eye for unique things so they can thrive at picking the next trends in clothing or furniture. Interior design and buying for retail stores are good careers for Aquarius, and vintage clothes and furniture stores often employ an Aquarian to scour the country op-shops for them.

Aquarians fall in love with things just because they are different - it can’t be proven, but it’s almost certain an Aquarian was behind the invention of twirling optic-fibre lamps, leg-warmers, fondue sets and snow-domes. Little wonder that it was the 1970s that embraced the Age of Aquarius. Read the rest of this entry »

The Aquarius Partner

Approach from the side, never head on, as there is nothing that will scare an Aquarian off more than a full-frontal romance attack. They can’t stand romantic nonsense like roses and candlelight, which they see as so predictable, tacky and unimaginative.

At this point, rose wilting pathetically, you may just want to put down your heart-shaped box of chocolates and run. No one would blame you. Not even Aquarius would blame you, and they will probably be quite remorseful next time they see you, once they’ve had a chance to calm down.

It is not that Aquarius really thinks you have no imagination (although she does love things to be a little bit unusual), she just got a bit of a shock. You were thinking of a nice night out, all she saw was a marriage proposal and a mortgage and a dozen snotty-nosed kids. The bars clanged down around her. She felt short of breath, claustrophobic, so she shot out the worst insult in her repertoire — that you are ordinary. Read the rest of this entry »

Pisces women are old-fashioned ladies at heart, and don’t let them tell you any different. The odd one will attempt to put up the modern woman front, but she will turn to mush if you run around and open the car door for her. Treat her like she is the most precious and delicate flower you ever came across, and she will melt right there in front of you.

Keep the first date fairly formal. She loves to dress up and will be disappointed if she can’t really wow you with her make-up and her clothes. The less relaxed the better, as Pisces will prefer the opportunity to wear her masks. Read the rest of this entry »

Unexpected prompts in waking life can bring clarify to the meaning of a recent dream. In this case study, an ornament that had gone unnoticed for many years became a vital reminder of the emotional warnings in the previous night’s dream.

Paul never paid much attention to his dreams until he and his wife Christine began to drift apart after seventeen years of marriage. Their problems built up so gradually that they were hardly noticeable. There were no real fights: superficially they still seemed to get along well, even when handling minor crises together, but the passion that once kept their relationship buoyant was slowlybeing snuffed out. Intimacy and sex became almost non-existent. When Paul was promoted at work, he celebrated with friends, and Christine did not learn of his promotion until two weeks later. Read the rest of this entry »

In the early days of a relationship many of us tend to be afflicted with attacks of self-doubt. If the developing bond starts to falter we all too readily blame ourselves for some error that we think we might have committed. The following exercise is designed to maintain ourselves-esteem in order to keep the relationship truly on its course.

1. Before you drift off to sleep, imagine a jewel casket. It is in your keeping, but it belongs to your partner, who is the greatest admirer of the treasures it contains. Without ever saying so, they value these treasures more than anything else, and could not bear to part with them under any circumstances.

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Letting go of a relationship often requires a leap of faith, especially when we know we must walk away but find it hard to summon up the courage to do so. This is especially true if the relationship has been longlasting: no matter how unsatisfying we find the situation, the prospect of a protracted parting, with all the bafflement and recriminations it might bring, acts as a strong deterrent. In order to come through the ordeal, we must believe that what lies ahead on our path will be worth all the pain endured to get there. Dreams can offer reassurance at such times, particularly if we consciously prompt them by using affirmations.

One dreamer, who had resigned herself to never loving again in the aftermath of a divorce that had battered her self-esteem, incubated a miracle dream to re-establish her faith in love. First, she repeated to herself the simple affirmation, “I can walk on clouds,” which made her feel alive andinvigorated. That night she dreamed that she stood gripping the head of a lion gargoyle at the top of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. She stared out over the city and then closed her eyes, held her breath, and slowly stepped out into midair. She was not at all surprised when she did not fall. She remained suspended in the air for a moment as she contentedly watched the city bustling below, before gently floating to the ground. This amazing dream feat restored her hope in the future.

To incubate your own miracle dream before you fall asleep, imagine that you are performing an impossible feat with incredible ease — perhaps walking on water, or dousing a forest fire just by looking at the flames, or riding an untamable wild horse. If this fails the first time, do not be discouraged or take it as a negative sign — just keep trying and you may soon succeed in working your own dream miracle.

The death of a parent can affect us for longer than we consciously realize, mingling confusingly with other emotional situations. This case study shows how dreamwork can help to clarify the long-term hurts that bereavement inflicts.

Mary was the newly married wife of a police officer, who broke her vow that she would never fall in love with a cop. She knew all too well the dangers of her husband’s job, because her father, a police officer for 30 years, was killed in the line of duty. But love for Jay finally triumphed over Mary’s reservations. Unfortunately, her anxiety returned early on in their married life, to the extent that she began to experience periods of panic — she feared that her husband, like her father, would one day not return from work. Read the rest of this entry »

Just when you thought that all of your personality traits had been described, Freud comes up with his third stage: the phallic stage. I’ve explained your orally fixated gum-smacking officemate. The pile of clothes on the floor of your room will never look the same after learning about the anal stage. But I’ve promised you sex, and it’s time to deliver, well sort of. The 3- to 5-yearold child is focused on the erogenous stimulation of the genital area, the penis and vagina specifically. In the phallic stage, gratification begins with autoeroticism. That means masturbation to the rest of us. But our need for satisfaction soon turns toward our parents, typically the parent of the opposite sex. As our sexual satisfaction expands, we find ourselves within the realm of one of Freud’s most controversial and strange contributions to the study of personality, the Oedipus complex. Read the rest of this entry »

There may be as many interview techniques in the psychological world as there are individual psychologists out there. Everyone has a different way of getting at the relevant information. So what is the relevant information? As I state in the previous section, most encounters begin with a discussion of the presenting problem. Very few people who come to a psychologist describe their problem according to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 4th Edition, (DSM-IV) criteria. Complaints are often vague or convoluted. Early communication problems between the psychologist and the patient are not necessarily because people don’t understand themselves. They’re often due to the fact that the doctor and patient have different vocabularies to describe the same problem. You say toMAYto, and I say toMAHto. You say you can’t sleep, eat, or stop crying, and I say you’re depressed. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s All About Sex!

It could read like a newspaper headline: “Sexual Satisfaction Fuels Personality Development!” Well not really, but Freud’s psychosexual theory of personality development was definitely about pleasure. What makes your personality so different from others? Freud’s search for the answer to this question led him to the discovery that the clues to understanding the uniqueness of an individual’s personality are found in infancy and childhood. Eureka, childhood is destiny! The personality that you live with today, the one that charms in order to get dates, makes lists and never gets anything done, ensures that the bathroom is always sparkling clean, was forged and molded in the fires of infancy and struggles of childhood. In fact, according to Freud, you were a unique final product by the time you hit puberty.

But what makes you so unique? Have you ever noticed how generic the ads in the “Personals” section of the newspaper are? “Single White Female looking for healthy nonsmoker for walks on the beach and good conversation.” I don’t know about you, but I’m always wondering what the real story is. What’s that SWF really like? After the first few dates, when all the romancing wears off, will she still be tolerable? What are her quirks? Does she snort when she laughs? Does she spend too much time talking about herself? Is her apartment neater than an army barracks? This is where the personality rubber hits the road. Behind the generic masks that we all present lie those things that make us stand out, our quirks. Read the rest of this entry »