We may also see things in the beloved parent which are not so lovely. For example, a man with Venus in the 10th may also have a Moon-Pluto square or a Moon-Saturn opposition, or Venus conjunct Saturn or Chiron. There are two very different images of mother expressed by such combinations, one of which is beloved and beautiful, the other of which is threatening or hurtful. These two attributes tend to manifest in one’s later life as two people - the Betrayed and the Instrument of Betrayal. This is what Jung called a "split anima", or the female equivalent - a "split animus". Jung was quite preoccupied with the psychological dynamics of this pattern because he suffered from it himself. Although his definitions are somewhat rigid and in need of greater flexibility in interpretation, they are useful in helping us to understand why we need triangles, and why the three points are secretly interchangeable. All three people are likely to suffer from the same unresolved parental dynamic. The inner split seems to be particularly strong and conducive to compulsive triangles when apparently irreconcilable opposites appear in the same beloved parent. There are parents in whom the opposites are not terribly opposite, but there are also parents in whom they are very extreme. Such parents are fascinating and often exercise great sexual charisma because they are so unfathomable. The parent is beautiful and beloved, but also hurtful, cruel, unfeeling, devouring, or otherwise indigestible. It is very hard for the human psyche to accept extreme opposites in one package, so one needs two people through whom one can experience the ambivalent feelings. One will get to be Venus, and the other will get to be Pluto or Saturn or Chiron or Mars or Uranus.
Parental images which convey extreme opposites may contribute to a propensity for triangles in adult life. We get involved with someone, and over time that person begins to take on the image of one side of the parent. After a few years of living together, we begin to say to ourselves and our friends, "My partner’s so possessive, I just have to have some breathing space," and there sits Venus in the 10th or the 4th, square Pluto. Or we say, "My partner is so restrictive and conventional, I just have to be free to be myself," and there sits Venus in the 10th with Moon opposition Saturn. We feel we aren’t enjoying the kind of beautiful, erotic, amusing relationship that we hoped we would find in partnership. We then justify the lover who plays the role of Venus. The split is acted out, but in fact it reflects two opposite qualities that we have not come to terms with in the relationship with one parent. Of course such splits connected with the parents are, at the deepest level, concerned with opposite qualities that have not been resolved within oneself. All triangles, including those arising from the family background, are ultimately concerned with our own unlived psychic life. If we were able to reconcile our own opposites, we could allow our parents to be contradictory as well. There is nothing extraordinary about a parent having both a charming, lovable Venusian side and a withdrawn Saturnian side or a demanding Plutonian side. Human beings are multifaceted, and they may both love us and hurt us. But we may find these contradictions in our parents intolerable if the parents themselves cannot cope with their own contradictions. Then we get no help in learning to integrate our contradictions. And some of these, in astrological terms, are simply too extreme to deal with in early life. By this I mean configurations which link Venus or the Moon to Saturn or Chiron - these require a wisdom only time and experience can make available - or to the outer planets, which are quite impossible for a young child to integrate on a personal level.
Split families - oppositions from 4th to 10th
Triangles may develop within the family through the parents splitting up. Often this is portrayed in the birth chart by oppositions from the 4th to the 10th. Such oppositions do not inevitably indicate that the parents have separated, but usually there is conflict and separation on a psychological level, if not a physical one. One experiences the parents in opposition, and when this happens we are usually forced to take sides. Our own inability to cope with the situation impels us to do so, and sometimes one parent cannot refrain from trying to elicit the child’s loyalty as a weapon against the other parent. In this situation the bottom line, as ever, involves a contradiction within the individual, experienced first through the parents, reflected by opposing planets in the chart, and ultimately needing to be dealt with on an inner level. But unconsciousness on the part of the parents can make this a longer and harder process. Even if we are subjected to no parental pressure, it is unlikely that we can cope with divided loyalties at such a young age. And in such circumstances it would take extremely wise and conscious parents to be in sufficient accord with each other to place no emotional pressure of any kind on their child. Usually, if the parents are so unhappy that they are separating, they are not in the mood to be cooperative. Separations release primal emotions in us, and these may involve considerable vindictiveness - especially if the separation is triggered by a triangle.
Often the child winds up feeling like a football in a particularly aggressive football match. One parent - especially if he or she is the Betrayed - may attempt to claim possession of the child, overtly or subtly, in order to hurt the Betrayer. There are certain scripts which appear to be read by lots of people. For example: "Your father left me because he was a *******. He was incapable of loving. He didn’t love any of us, otherwise he wouldn’t have gone off with that woman." The message to a male child might be: "I hope you don’t grow up to be like him." The message to a female child might be: "I hope you don’t grow up to marry somebody like him." Such messages do not have to be spoken. They may be communicated through martyrdom and ongoing misery. The Betrayed, when parents split up, will usually have great power over the child’s psyche because of the compassion he or she can draw out of the child. Children are not equipped to step out of the fray and look objectively at the break-up. It must be someone’s fault, either their own or one of the parents. And children also dare not reject those messages, because they are terrified of angering the parent who is now the sole caretaker. In our society, when parents split up, the mother usually gets the child - even if this is not psychologically the best solution for that particular child. There are many instances where the father might be emotionally better equipped to raise the child, but the courts of law do not see it that way. The mother must be quite floridly appalling to have her child taken away from her. If the parents are not actually married, the father’s rights may be nonexistent in terms of access. One might well question whether a father really merits having his child torn away and turned against him solely because he has betrayed his wife. But triangles have a way of generating very unpleasant emotional consequences which carry on down the generations and breed more triangles.
The permutations of human blindness are many and various, and divorcing or separating parents - or even those who remain living together but are emotionally alienated - will generally demand that the child choose one or the other. The love for the other parent must be denied, suppressed, silenced. This is terribly human. If we are hurt by someone, we find it hard to bear if someone else we love shows affection to the person who has hurt us. If there are oppositions between the 4th and the 10th in the child’s chart, then the child’s own inner division colludes with the parents’ division. I have seen many, many examples over the years where the person has had to deny great love for a parent in such circumstances. The denial may be believed even by the person himself or herself. When we see Venus, Moon, Neptune, Sun, or Jupiter in a parental house, we know that there is a powerful positive bond with the parent, even if the relationship has also been very difficult. If any of these planets are in the 4th, they are likely to describe strongly positive and even idealised feelings for the father. But if there has been a break-up and the father has gone off - or if there are oppositions from planets in the 10th, even if he hasn’t gone off - it may prove impossible for the person to keep such feelings in consciousness. The ambivalence may be too
painful, and the sense of disloyalty to the mother may be too great to bear. Perhaps the father has left because of another relationship. Perhaps he marries again, and has other children. Then the problem is compounded, because the child’s own jealousy allies with the jealousy of the mother and makes it quite impossible for the emotional bond with the father to be recognised. The relationship is destroyed, and the child, who is now grown up, says, "Oh, I haven’t seen my father much since the divorce. I have very little to do with him. I see him occasionally, but we don’t have much of a relationship." All the positive, loving feelings have been pushed underground, because we do not cope well with divided loyalties. We suppress them because we have to survive psychologically; and we have to live with mother.
If there are planets in the 4th which suggest love and idealisation, and the parents split up, the suppressed feelings for the father may provide fodder for later triangles. This can apply to both sexes. It should not be surprising if a woman coming from this kind of family background, with this kind of chart configuration, winds up playing the Instrument of Betrayal and hurls herself at a married man. Equally, she may find herself as the Betrayed, married to someone just like her father. Or she may become the Betrayer as a defence, because she is determined not to wind up like her mother. A man with this background and chart placement may wind up unconsciously choosing a woman like his mother and then, to his horror, finds himself in his father’s shoes. A triangle may be inevitable, because the more unconscious the feelings are toward this beloved missing parent, the more certain they will be to emerge later in an adult relationship.
These unconscious feelings may also cross sexes. They do not necessarily limit themselves to women who seek the missing father in other men, or men who find themselves in the same situation as their fathers. A man who has lost his father, and who has Venus or Neptune or the Moon in the 4th, may seek the qualities of the father in women. Or if he is gay, he may seek them in another man. We need to think of these dynamics not from a perspective of rigid sexual demarcations, but as a way of attempting to heal a wound. Also, they reflect our efforts to contact archetypal qualities in our adult relationships which we glimpsed first in the parent and which we ultimately need to find in ourselves. Because we carry something unresolved and unhealed, we may faithfully recreate our parents’ marriage. Then we may find ourselves in the same triangle, on any of the three points, with either or both sexes. These underlying dynamics seem very obvious when we start thinking about them. The difficulty lies in thinking about them when we are in the middle of a triangle. It is very easy if we are the detached astrologer or psychotherapist - if there is indeed such a thing as an entirely detached person - or even the friend with a certain amount of psychological knowledge. We may clearly see the familial roots of many adult triangles if we are observers, but it is extremely difficult to see them when we are involved in the triangle. And the more unconscious we are of our parental dynamics, the more emotionally compulsive the triangle is likely to be, and the harder it is to see clearly.
Even if we do see, we may still be bound, because we have to live something through. We do not heal anything through the exercise of reason alone. But the emotions which the triangle brings to the surface may change, and the outcome may be very different, internally if not externally. The sad thing about triangles is that everybody loses. Sooner or later, on one level or another, all three people wind up hurt. Even if the Instrument of Betrayal succeeds in breaking up an existing relationship and "getting" the love-object that he or she has been fighting for, it is a Pyrrhic victory. The Betrayer has to choose in the end, so even if something is won, something is also lost. And the victory is no less Pyrrhic for the Betrayed who succeeds in "getting back" the erring partner. We have exercised our Oedipal power and reversed the original Oedipal defeat that we suffered in childhood. But what have we really won, and what must we live with afterward? Resentment seems to be inevitable, no matter which point of the triangle we favour. If we are the Instrument of Betrayal, we have led someone else into making a very painful choice, and often there will be a lot of suffering, not only emotionally but also financially, and so there will be resentment. But even more importantly, if we remain unconscious, we have done nothing to heal the inner split which lies behind the triangle. We have only achieved an external solution. Nothing has really changed.
Insecurities which generate triangles - Saturn and Chiron
There is another consequence of family triangles - the potential alienation between oneself and others of one’s own sex. An unresolved Oedipal battle may result in a loss of trust in one’s own sexuality. If a situation of intense rivalry and competitiveness occurred with the same-sex parent, there will inevitably be effects in terms of our friendships and the way that we interact with our own sex later. If a woman has a mother who is an insurmountable rival, at whose hands she has suffered a painful and humiliating childhood defeat, confidence in her femininity may be undermined. And because she does not trust herself, she will not trust other women. They will all seem to have the power to "take away" those she loves. This mistrust of one’s own sex can be very acute. A woman may have a wonderful friendship with another woman, and then she meets a really lovely man, and they get involved, and what does she do about introducing her friend to her partner? The undercurrent of anxiety and suspicion may make things very difficult, and unconsciously she may even set herself up for betrayal. She may unconsciously select as friends those of her own sex who act out her unresolved conflict with her mother, because they have unresolved conflicts with their mothers. The same applies to men. If a man has experienced a situation of destructive competitiveness with his father, then, in any later relationship in which he becomes involved, the issue of rivalry will always raise its head, because other men always seem to be potential rivals. One must be on guard all the time. This is not possessiveness in the ordinary sense. Its roots are quite different.
Placements such as Venus aspecting Saturn or Chiron can contribute to this dynamic, not because they are in themselves Oedipal, but because they reflect certain insecurities which can be compounded by the family triangle. Mars aspecting Saturn and Chiron may also reflect deep sexual insecurities which are heightened by family triangles and lead to feelings of defeat. These sets of aspects may compel a repetition of the failure later, or an attempt to heal the hurt by proving one’s sexual potency through triangles. There is no single astrological pattern which describes a propensity for triangles, but rather, many different combinations which can describe different images of and responses to the parents, and different ways of reacting to the natural and inevitable Oedipal phase of childhood. Venus-Saturn and Venus-Chiron do not "cause" a person to be drawn into triangles, but they describe a deep and innate awareness of human limits which, in childhood, when there is no real comprehension of what this could offer in a positive sense, can lead the child into feeling inadequate and damaged. The loss or alienation of a beloved parent will then be attributed to one’s own failings, and later in life one may feel one cannot "keep" a partner because a rival will always take him or her away.
Oedipal experiences often come out with a bang in midlife, because the planets making their cycles at that time - Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus - may trigger configurations which connect us to childhood issues. There is a great deal of unlived life clamouring for expression under the midlife group of transits, and unresolved family triangles that have managed to remain buried may finally break out because they are carrying unlived psychic life with them. But it depends on how powerful the conflict is. It may come out much earlier. There are people who experience triangles from the very beginning of their relationship lives. Not all triangles have parental roots, and parental roots may also involve something deeper. We may well wonder what could be deeper than the Oedipal dynamic, but as Jung was reputed to have once said, even the penis is a phallic symbol. If there is a family pattern which is unresolved, such as the Venusian issues we have been looking at, it stands a good chance of erupting in one’s outer life under the appropriate transits. That, for some people, may be the only way any kind of healing or resolution becomes possible. But behind the parental issue is the archetypal issue - why do we seek the love of that particular parent, and what does the parent symbolise for our own souls? This is invariably linked with what needs to be developed in oneself - one’s own destiny.
At midlife, if important bits of oneself have remained undeveloped, they will come bursting out, especially under the Uranus opposition to its own place. And often, the first place we meet these occluded bits of ourselves is in somebody else. It is the most characteristic way in which the psyche knocks on the door and demands integration. This need to become more of what one really is may begin with a sudden attraction. Unlived bits of ourselves may also appear in a rival. Surprisingly, the rival may be more important psychologically than the person over whom one is fighting. But if there has been no pattern of triangles earlier, the eruption of one at midlife may not necessarily imply an unresolved family problem. And if it does, the problem needs to be seen in a larger context.
Triangles which involve unlived life
We now come to the issue of what might really lie beneath the dynamics of triangles - beneath the parental patterns and defences and power-plays and all the other apparently "causal" reasons why triangles enter our lives. I believe there is always an element of unlived life in every triangle, and for various reasons it seems we are sometimes unable to discover that unlived life except through the extreme emotional stress which triangles generate. Betrayal is an archetypal experience which is our chief instrument of maturation. This does not mean that we all need to become embittered cynics. But there is something important in recognising how our fantasies of what we think life and love should be prevent us from growing up and becoming full members of the human family. Betrayal is the means through which these fantasies are punctured and recognised. We attempt to enclose ourselves and other people in our fantasy-world, which is meant to compensate for childhood pain. Since all childhoods have pain, the naive assumptions we carry are also archetypal, and reflect an alternative child-world that resembles Eden in its innocence and fusion-state with the divine parent. The serpent in the Garden is therefore an image of this archetypal role of betrayal, which is inherent in the state of innocence and sooner or later rises up to destroy our fusion.
There is no formula to cope with the pain of betrayal. But an archetypal perspective can help us to look at things differently, although the pain cannot be explained or imagined away. There is no remedy for this kind of pain. But there is a difference between blind pain and pain that is accompanied by understanding. The latter has a transformative effect. When there is no consciousness, triangles do tend to repeat themselves - different characters, same script. Some triangles are truly transformative. They do break apart an old pattern, and the new relationship is genuinely much happier and more rewarding. Or the triangle serves the purpose of freeing energy, freeing inner potentials, and even if the old relationship is re-established, or one winds up with neither party, everything has changed. But we are still ourselves, however much we try to rearrange our outer lives, and if an inner issue has not been dealt with, the same patterns will begin to arise in the new relationship. The compatibility may be greater with another partner, but one must still deal with one’s own psyche.
A triangle can be like a grand trine in a chart. The energy circles around and around; it flows back on itself and does not nourish anything else in one’s life. Within triangles, all three people tend to project elements of themselves on each other. The triangle holds these projections in place, and there may be enormous resistance to change. We might even say that the triangle forms because there is resistance to change, so whatever is seeking expression from within is experienced through projection. When such a triangle breaks up, the projections come back home again. Psychic energy is released, whether it is through death or the voluntary relinquishing of someone. The timing of this is not accidental. In one or two or even all three parties, unconscious issues have finally reached a point where they can be integrated, even if this is expressed by simply letting it go. The moment we are able to do that, the projections begin to become conscious. I do not believe real forgiving comes in any other way. It is a kind of grace. It cannot be created by an act of will. It is very sad to hear the Betrayed saying, "I forgive you," not because it is truly heartfelt, but in order to get the straying partner back again. Underneath there may be no forgiveness at all - although this may not be entirely conscious - and then the punishment can go on and on. Forgiveness can only come out of a recognition of one’s collusion in the triangle - whatever one’s role - and the taking back of one’s projections. Before that, forgiveness is not really possible. It only seems to emerge out of something being genuinely integrated in oneself. The entire process is transformative. We cannot manufacture forgiveness if we have been betrayed - nor can we manufacture it for ourselves if we are the Betrayer. We can only work to integrate what belongs to our own souls.
The Saturnian parent who rejects, and then turns up in a triangle as a cold and rejecting partner, may have something to do with our own need to acquire boundaries. If we view this fundamental Saturnian experience from a more detached perspective, what is rejection, in the end, except someone else drawing boundaries which we find intolerable? It may be our own lack of boundaries that attracts us into a triangle where we are the Betrayed, rejected by a Saturnian partner who says, "I can’t stand this emotional claustrophobia. I want to be separate." Or we may be the Betrayer, fleeing from a partner whose emotional needs seem stifling but who secretly mirrors our own inability to cope with loneliness. The hard and painful lessons that come from these kinds of experiences are lessons about what is undeveloped in ourselves. We may have to discover our primal passions if Pluto is in our 10th or 4th. But we may disown this at first, and say, "My mother was terribly manipulative," or, "My father was so controlling." Why do people become manipulative and controlling? If someone is expressing Plutonian qualities in a relationship, they are not doing it because it is fun; they are doing it because the relationship is equated with survival, and there is a desperate need to ensure that the beloved remains close. Pluto is mobilised when one feels under threat. People become manipulative because they are terrified of losing the object of their love. That love object constitutes survival for them, and manipulation seems the only possible way to ensure the continuity of the relationship. We are all capable of this, given the right level of attachment and the right level of threat. If we disown these Plutonian attributes and keep them firmly projected on the parent, Pluto may turn up in a triangle. Then we ourselves may have to discover how possessive we can be. Or we acquire a deeply possessive partner. We may get as far as saying, "Ah, yes, I have chosen someone just like my mother/father." That is a useful piece of insight, but it is only the beginning. This possessive quality in the parent is described by our own 4th or 10th house Pluto. We must still discover it in ourselves. Often we only discover we have a Pluto through the experience of betrayal. It is just a blank in the chart until a triangle unearths it, and then we suddenly find our Pluto for the first time. We discover that we feel passionately, that we need intensely, that desperation can make us treacherous and manipulative, and that control may seem the only way to survive. This process of self-discovery may be a frightening and humbling experience, but it allows us to fully become what we are.
Psychic integration is the teleology of all triangles. Even when the outer planets are involved in parental triangles, the thing to which we are so deeply attached in the parent is really something that belongs to our own souls. This "something" may involve our stretching beyond personal boundaries and allowing a deeper or higher level of reality into our lives, but nevertheless it is connected with our own life journey. When we see astrological symbols which we experience first through the parents and then later through a triangle in which the same experience repeats itself, there is something within us that needs to be lived, and it may keep coming back through triangles until we find a way to live it. Planets which are parental significators in the chart are not only descriptive of parental patterns. They are descriptive of unlived dimensions of ourselves, especially when they do not agree with the rest of the chart. Even if the parent embodies the planet in creative ways, it is still our planet, and belongs to our own destiny. A planet in the 4th or 10th, or in major aspect to the Sun or Moon, may not be enacted obviously by the parent, but it will be part of what we experience through the parent. If the parent has not creatively lived the archetypal pattern symbolised by the planet, it is harder to understand what we are dealing with. And therefore we may not realise what we are meeting through a triangle which appears in our life later. It is not just an unfinished parental complex, although that element may be important to explore. It is ultimately one’s own planet, and therefore something of one’s own soul. It is part of our psychological inheritance, but we must give shape to it. Even triangles which appear screamingly Oedipal also have to do with our own inner lives, because what we love or hate in the parent is something that belongs to us. But we need to find our own way of living it.