Breaking Down the Big 3: A Metaphor for Your Life Story

Become familiar with the Sun, Moon, and Ascendant signs to begin working towards personal evolution and soul fulfillment.

The Big 3 in Astrology

Your astrological birth chart is complex and contains information about the planets, asteroids, and their relationships to each other at the time of your birth. Your personal horoscope can be studied for a lifetime, but becoming acquainted with just 3 important pieces of information is enough to gain masterful insight into your psyche and into the types of activities & qualities that will lead to a feeling of soul fulfillment. Together these placements are known as 'Your Big 3'. (Think entry-level understanding into your personal astrology.)

Envisioning Your Life Journey With Astrology

Each planet and essential point in the birth chart has a specific role to play as you live out your individual life story. Your astrological birth chart represents so much more than your personality quirks. (Although, those are fun to look at and can be full of the cringey truth.)

Map laid out in the front window of a car and looking out onto the road.
Photo by Tabea Schimpf / Unsplash
But the birth chart becomes so profound when we begin to look at it as a roadmap to evolution. It can escort us through our growing pains, revealing the shadow behaviors that need conscious reprogramming. Simultaneously, it can illuminate our greatest talents, piloting us as we soar to majestic heights.

Consider the 3 placements described below to be your dream team, your all-star cast members, and the starting lineup for the interesting, magical, and sometimes painful journey better known as your life.

Ascendant Signs: Life Guides

A.K.A. your 'Rising' sign. This is the zodiac sign that was coming into view on the eastern horizon as you entered that human avatar of yours. Consider this sign and the planet that rules this sign to be your personal guide on your life journey. The characteristics of this zodiac sign will be apparent in your outward behavior (just as much, if not more so than your Sun sign.)

A person looking out at 2 pathways before them in the Muir Woods trails
Photo by Caleb Jones / Unsplash

When you come to a fork in the road, allow this zodiac sign to pick the path for you. When you meet a group of travelers along the way, this is how you prefer to greet them. It's essential for us to meet new experiences with the positive attributes of this sign. The ruling planet of this zodiac sign is your personal advisor (Hand of the Queen or King in 'Game of Thrones' lingo.) The ruling planet is holding hands with you and gently (or not so gently depending on which planet) pulling you in certain directions. Following the path of your rising sign as laid out by its planetary ruler will make you feel as though you are traveling in the right direction.

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The Ascendant sign is symbolic of the way we meet the world, the path we are traveling, and the direction we are heading. The ruling planet of the Ascendant sign can be likened to the personal advisor who is holding our hand on this journey. 

Sun Signs: Trials & Tribulations

When someone asks 'What's your sign?', you are responding with the zodiac sign that the Sun was placed in at your moment of birth. Developing the characteristics and embodying the archetype of your Sun sign will make you feel like a happier and more whole human being. You may even feel that you are meeting your life's purpose when you work towards the conscious evolution of your Sun sign.

Depending on the rest of our chart, some of us will feel more aligned with this energy than others. It may even appear to others that we skillfully represent the archetypal energies of our Sun sign. (And that may be true, but this is an energy we are developing for life.) On the inside, we may actually feel inadequate at our Sun sign or we may work on it consistently and still never feel that it is quite enough.

Like the explorer who has still yet to see enough of the world, the student who feels that they will never learn enough to be an expert, the artist who still hasn't completed their masterpiece, and the community organizer who will never be done helping their community. The plight of the Sun sign is that we will always have work to do there.

woman doing Karate at sunrise
Photo by svklimkin / Unsplash

We have to do battle with the negative tendencies of our Sun signs. I can't promise that those impulses will ever disappear. But every time we do battle with them, we emerge stronger and better for it, even when we lose. (And trust me, you will lose sometimes.)

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The Sun sign is symbolic of the traits that we feel good displaying as well as the battles and life lessons that we will face on our journey home to ourselves. Evolving into the Sun sign takes conscious effort and intention.

Moon Signs: Intuition & Replenishment

Now, while you're on this sea-faring voyage, this extended, snowy mountainous trek, this ever-lasting ride through flat desert plains, you are inevitably going to get worn out. In those perilous times, simply turn to your Moon sign to recharge your batteries.

Or better yet, make it a practice to honor your Moon sign on the regular so that your personal battery isn't on 3% by the time you decide to take a break. (Now you've got to put a full stop to this journey just so that you can continue to function like a human being!)Most of you would never let your phone battery dare to drop below 20%, but you will go and go and go until your human tank is running on fumes and now you can barely make it to the gas station in time!

person lying in a hammock and watching the Neilston Pad sunset
Photo by Chris Thompson / Unsplash

We've all got to learn how to mother ourselves. Well, this is it, fellow crusaders. The key to mothering yourself lies in learning about the sign that the Moon was in at the time of your birth. Chances are, you didn't take your actual mother with you on this dangerous, winding road of life development fraught with dragons, zombies, and god-knows-what. (I'm no therapist, but if you did, I have to say that you may have failed from the get-go.)

The Moon sign is also symbolic of our intuition. I bet there are many times on this journey where 'so-called' logic just has to be thrown out the window. You'll have to rely on a feeling, a gut impulse, an inner knowing. That feeling will be your Moon sign screaming tactics of survival in your ear.

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The Moon sign is symbolic of the activities and characteristics that fill our cups, recharge our batteries, and make us feel nurtured. It also represents our personal intuition, gut instincts, and decisions based from the heart. 

Birth Charts: Mapping Your Personal Evolution

Of course, many other factors in the birth chart have their role to play in your unique lifelong expedition. But, understanding these 3 pieces of the birth chart is plentyyyyyy to start with. You will go a lot farther with the image-rich symbolism within it if you begin to see your personal horoscope not as stagnant descriptors of personality, but instead, as the keys to your personal evolution, happiness, and fulfillment.