Erin Sullivan's latest book is a breakthrough both in astrology and psychology. The Astrology of Family Dynamics makes for gripping reading and shows us that astrology is the only system that demonstrates the complexities of the family as an organic whole, the family's place in the collective, and the role an individual plays in carrying on the ancestral line. Sullivan writes with compassion and accuracy, weaving together various methods of analyzing and working with individuals and their families. Erin Sullivan does not write in the Linda Goodman style, offering easy-to-compute formulas or clichéd astrological typecasting. What she does offer in The Astrology of Family Dynamics is a discussion on how each of us fits into the larger scheme of family, meaning humanity as well as the nuclear family. This intriguing blend of psychology and astrology addresses the family as an organic whole, taking into account the planetary positions that affect all members. Even without a tidy formula, each of us will certainly recognize our family in Sullivan's section on the elements, in which she characterizes families by Earth (reliability, practicality, self-reliance), Fire (spontaneity, gambling, competitiveness), Air (eccentricity, lots of space between family members, politeness), and Water (emotional, guilty, chaotic, humorous). Those who are students of astrology will find this especially important reading. Dabblers who like their astrology "lite" may find this a bit dense and theoretical. --Gail Hudson Samara Anjelae is an award-winning author, gifted mystic and spiritual strategist. Samara's mystical and medium abilities awakened and heightened in 1991 after she encountered her guardian angel that changed the course of her life. The Astrology of Family Dynamics By ERIN SULLIVAN Samuel Weiser, Inc. Copyright © 2001 Erin Sullivan All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-57863-179-7 Contents IntroductionPART I: The Big Picture: The Organic Family1. The Individual and the Collective2. The Nuclear Family as a System3. Family Patterns and Family Trees4. The Sun and Moon in Families5. Mothers and Fathers: Freud Had It Half Right6. Family Themes: Movers and Shakers in the Family7. Families and Our FamiliarsPART II: Family Dynamics8. The Modal Family: The Tension of Life9. The Elemental Family: Circuits of Being10. The Water Houses; The Ancestral Eyes of the Soul11. Families in Flux: Transits and Moving ForwardPART III: Dynasty12. Real Lives, Real People13. Tobias: Touched by God14. Mohsin: Who am I?15. Rejected in the Womb16. What's Bred in the Bone: The Circuit Breaker17. The Procession of the Ancestors18. The Last in the Line: The Many in the OneAppendixTHE KENNEDY FAMILYOVER-DEVELOPMENT IN A SIGNBibliographyIndex CHAPTER 1 The Individual andthe Collective THE FAMILY OF HUMANITY DYNASTIC LINEAGE: THE BIG PICTURE We might look back over aeons and recognize our own personal self-development–justas we emerge from the womb, into our infancy, through our developmentalyears, past adolescence, into our twenties, the Saturn-return, the thirties, themid-life transition, to maturity in the fifties and second Saturn-return phaseand on into dotage, so does the collective culture emerge and develop. If we seethis as a cycle, and not as a linear experience, then the relationship betweenthe individual and the collective becomes quite intimate. Just as a cultureevolves, so does an individual: from embryo–total psychic participation with theenvironment–to birth through the initial stages of individuation, into full ego,or awareness of self, and the subsequent developmental periods, the process isremarkably parallel to how we appear to have evolved as a collective world-humanity. We like to believe that the archaic mind was holistic, in that it perceived nosplit between nature and culture. There existed no differentiation between theindividual and his environment, no split between man and god, no vast chasmbetween thought and feeling or the sacred and profane. This kind ofconsciousness is called mythopoeic and can best be described as a state of mindin which one participates wholly in the environment without conscious awarenessof the separation from others or from the natural environment. These archaicpeoples, so-called primitives, appear to have been peaceable, relating to theirenvironment as they would to their own inner selves. Their known ritualsinvolved what the French mythographer Lévy-Bruhl termed participation mystique .That is, their consciousness was at one with the external world and theirpsychic relationship with nature wholly participatory–they did not subordinatenature in the way in which we now do, but took from nature what was needed forsurvival and apparently had a respect for animals, trees, the elemental forcesand various celestial phenomena which is keenly lacking today. We know little about these most archaic humans–palaeontology shows us bonystructures, the skeletons of our ancestors,