Chinese and Western astrology disagree

Hi all,

Well I truly do have a question regarding the direction of my career but I decided against asking specific questions. Instead I'll ask a question that I think can help me understand my Western chart more; at the very least, it's for an entertainment purpose.
So: I know some small basics of both Chinese astrology (Zi Wei) and Western astrology. They disagree on my career direction (but then not much I can read online about Pisces MC is helpful anyway) and also disagree on its progress in this period of 10 years (2018-2028). So I guess my question is, based on my Western chart alone, can you please give an educated guess on what my career choice is or should be?
[For reference: DOB 04/13/1986; time: 9:15am; birth place: 10.8° N, 106.6° E; Female]

I bet you already have some strong ideas about your career direction, since you already had your Saturn Return. Is this question now about rerouting or redirecting that career?

With Gemini rising, and your chart ruler, Mercury , being in the 10th,squaring Uranus, I can see you possibly working in communications/transportation or IT networks. You have a very quick mind, with flashes of brilliance and can probably work out complicated concepts in math theory and engineering, that most could not imagine.

However, your MC is in Pisces, with Jupiter conjunct it and squaring Saturn. So it seems that you also have an urge for Artistic, Creative Craftsman type of skills as well. Maybe that is where your heart is?

Pisces on the MC can feel overwhelmed and confused about career direction. There are so many options but none seem like a perfect fit, perhaps because you are critical and have high expectations of yourself and others, but may incorrectly feel you are not as capable as you need to be.

That is the retrograde Saturn squaring your MC that is making you feel insecure or less than adequate, in my opinion.

Your ambitions and enthusiasm are wonderful. But the Mars conjunction with Neptune may create situations where you feel you have overpromised and under delivered.

You may need to work with a career counselor or a employment agency to verify your credentials/resume/experience, and help you get on the right track.

You have so much amazing potential with that Pluto trining the Jupiter/MC and the Sun in an exact trine with Uranus. I keep coming back to IT, but it has to also include some creative/artisitic/inspirational components, like film or music, to really capture your heart.

Hi katydid, thanks for your reply.
I don't work in IT, I work in academia (research/math/science). I'm thinking rather a break then a complete turn from my current career. Mainly due to the money issue. I love research and I love frontier, high, technical information.

My Chinese horoscope foretells I'd work in medical (surgery the best) and Western astrology just vaguely says "nurturing careers" (the hell is that?) when it comes to Pisces MC. Both astrology corresponds a lot. Vedic astrology is the most far-off I've read. I acknowledge that I only know interpretations in delineation of these aspects instead of their integration.
Thanks for encouragement, but it's been really sucky so far. My life is laden with financial stress. My Western horoscope has this chiron conjunct ascendant aspect and nothing about it reads positive. My Chinese horoscope foretells once I reach the age of 30, there's no need to see the chart - I'd get everything I want. Yet my Western horoscope foretells a decade of uncertainty (Neptune transit in 10th). I feel cheated.

Yes I do have a stream of artistic ideas. I can't do anything about them since I don't have a means to carry them out.

Currently I'm doing part time in financial industry. It's for money and I feel like I must do it in order to provide for my family (my parents). But I feel extremely sad that everything I've built up for in the past 10 years didn't make a dent.
I'd be grateful if you could help me see if I would get a job in research academia this year prior to this August? I feel a strong resistance in me whenever I think I might have to go off to finance. Even though the money really pays.

The planets are more important than the signs to look at.

This is a bit cheap because you've already said what you're doing and would like to do, so I guess not very entertaining...

However, both finance and academia look to be suitable careers based on the chart. The 1st lord is Mercury in the 10th with Jupiter. Both are rather financial planets (and both can actually also be academic). Mercury rules academics generally, mathematics, trade etc while Jupiter rules money, banks etc.

I would say the Jupiter leans towards finance more than Mercury with Mercury more being academic in this case. Though they are both connected. So it is possible the career could shift depending on period of the planet one is in (academic with Mercury being triggered).

I cannot judge planetary periods (without a lot of unnecessary effort on my part anyway...) from a blank chart readily so can't do too much timing in that way.

You have 2nd lord (Moon) in the 1st sign (Gemini) which will tend to make someone who is more going to take responsibility upon themselves for their family - which leans me towards thinking you will end up going with which pays best and allows that.

That said (for a relatively vague timing method), Saturn is currently transiting your 8th...and will be for the next couple of years. That often will cause a shift in career so if you're going to shift now does seem a likely time.

"This is a bit cheap because you've already said what you're doing and would like to do, so I guess not very entertaining...": I don't understand the meaning of this.

"I cannot judge planetary periods (without a lot of unnecessary effort on my part anyway...) from a blank chart readily so can't do too much timing in that way": Understand, that would be a lot. I can't understand much the difference between transits and secondary solar return anyway to post any data up here.

"I would say the Jupiter leans towards finance more than Mercury with Mercury more being academic in this case. Though they are both connected. So it is possible the career could shift depending on period of the planet one is in (academic with Mercury being triggered)": I see, I was really frustrated with this transition and was thinking I'm trading my soul away, for learning (academia) is what I truly love. This relieves me somehow.

"You have 2nd lord (Moon) in the 1st sign (Gemini) which will tend to make someone who is more going to take responsibility upon themselves for their family - which leans me towards thinking you will end up going with which pays best and allows that.": Yes, sometimes I wish I didn't have anyone in my life. This has scared me so much that I stop wanting a family of my own.

Thanks for the input. I've been trying to study this on my own (to cut out the mediocre middle astrologers who overcharges me in CA) but it's been tough, due to the insufficient and sometimes careless records in Western astrology. Chinese astrology is more detailed and practical, but also suffers the same record problem.

I'd like to add that I myself have been lost so many times in figuring out career directions. Someone told me my Chinese astrology says that up to 80% I'd work for the government at one point, to add to the confusion. The correspondence between the two astrologies is interesting: My Ming is Tai Yang (the Sun) which with extra fire stars has characteristics like an Aries and my Shen is Tian Tong (blessed child) which acts naturally like a Gemini. I have a pair of Green Dragon + White Phoenix which says that I'd love food, arts, high quality stuff, etc (Venus in Taurus). That's great and all but when it comes to tell practical things like career, both have not been useful.

I am not sure that a chart can tell you what your career will be. Your career is what you decide it will be. A natal chart can tell you positive options for your career. But there is not 'one' career choice set out in a natal chart.

You are the one who decides what your best career option is, by using your work history and preferences from past experience, and your available options.

Your chart shows your temperament, innate skills, types of jobs you may prefer and what options you might look to.

If you could create the perfect job , what would it entail?

I've been under a lot of self-doubt when deciding to go in finance. But I'm broke and need to care for family. This has kept me up at night since what I'm after in life is learning and recognition. I want an environment where's constant flux of high end information. I don't mind sleeping and living with work. Finance gives security, that relieves the stress, but people in finance are not say, people in physics. There's a threshold in information that people in finance can tolerate.

Are there any job options available to you using your skills in physics/theory/research, etc?

Your Mercury in Pisces squaring Uranus craves that kind of input/analysis. But the square indicates that it might not be easy to find steady work in the field?

There are. The thing is, as things become more high tech, a typical job becomes more specialized, as a result, people who are trained to be a specialist will find it hard to jump to another field.

My field is a subfield, albeit very active subfield, of another subfield of a branch in STEM. I was completely blind sighted by the fact that the academic market is extremely cut throat and also underfunded (which increases the competition). If one is to jump out, one needs to find another field that has the most overlapping with one's current field. But even so, there will be requirements to the outside field. Last year, I wanted to switch out and go work for defense analysis (so basically defend the states against foreign cyber attack) and found out that I need to understand foreign relations as far back as the cold war as well as speak several languages.

I'm doing finance temporarily, hopefully. I'm still hoping for a position in academia. But in the mean time, I'm building up my tech skills as well. I'm learning animation on the side - sometimes I think I should have chosen animation in the beginning, it gives me an outlet, it has math/physics and it makes money. Once a Western astrologer told me that my chart doesn't indicate that I'd be a Shelton (big bang theory); he told me I'd make more money if I "make association" with people.

So yeah I'm still holding out the hope. Training myself in 5 subjects per day and trying not to let the voices of defeat drown me - trying to do it all over again at the age of 31, it's painfully scary. I've made a lot of wrong decisions in choosing career/grad school and it costs me greatly. I wish these psychics and astrologers had warned me against my choices instead.

[when did you take interests in astrology? what is your learning source?]

[when did you take interests in astrology? what is your learning source?]




When I was 11 or 12, my best friend and I had birthdays 1 day apart. She was October 22nd, I was the 23rd. We thought we were both Libras. I would read about Libras, and didn't really feel like it described me at all. So I didn't believe that Astrology was 'real.'

When I was 13, my best friend's grandmother drew up my astrology chart, and her granddaughters chart, as birthday presents for us.

I found out that my friend was a Libra, with Libra rising.


However, I found out that I was a SCORPIO... And she gave me a book by Evangeline Adams, written in 1930 or so...lol


Reading about Scorpio, I read a description that did fit me, perfectly.

Grandma told me that I would be a good astrologer, as I had an exact trine from Mercury in Scorpio to Uranus in Cancer, in my 3rd.

So I began studying Astrology in middle school. She even taught me how to calculate charts.

Through High School I continued to read books by Sydney Omar and George Llewellyn and Isabel Hickey. They were great basic Astrology Books which taught me a lot. But when I moved to Berkeley for college, I began going to REAL metaphysical book stores, and began a serious study of modern astrologers like Dane Rudyhar, Robert Hand, Liz Greene---and then studied under Marion March at Aquarius Workshops for a few years.

This is fun. I have Scorpionic people in my whole life. My mom is Pluto rising, same birth day. Our characters are different but our lives share similar patterns. So I'm scared to think that I might be her reincarnation - according to reincarnation theory, lives can overlap. I myself have Venus opposite Pluto with Pluto in 5th. My once closest friend was a Scorpio with Venus also in Scorpio. He was scarily psychic. I have a crazy theory that he was my enemy in our past life and this life he gave me wrong predictions in order to throw me off. He doesn't do it on purpose. But since he's a Scorpio, he must have fooled himself into thinking he's giving me the right advice. Yeah, absolutely crazy, but long story.
Whoever I ever fall for or have a strong connection with, love or hate, is very Scorpionic: some guy who has Mars in Scorpio, some girl who has Venus trine Pluto, another girl who has Venus conjunct Pluto in Scorpio.

I have no discrimination against mysticism, as it's shown so far. I studied Chinese physiognomy at the age of 10. When I was younger, I definitely could give you Feng Shui advice.

This thread has evolved into something else, so I guess I should change the title now. Since I see that you're rather active up here, can I ask if there's any way to tell one choice is better than the other based on the chart? Specifically when I chose grad school, I have two choices. I think I made the wrong choice based on the terrible outcome I get at the end, but I can't know for sure since I didn't have the experience of the other one. So, is there a way to tell at a point in one's life that one choice would fit more to one's direction?

[Yeah talk about rising sign, back then I didn't think Western signs mean anything at all, as I didn't find myself to be very Arian. The hot temper is there, but I'm not entirely into sports. I like martial arts, sky diving, roller coaster, but on an average day, I find myself thinking a lot instead of going out and hiking, say.]

"... can I ask if there's any way to tell one choice is better than the other based on the chart? Specifically when I chose grad school, I have two choices. I think I made the wrong choice based on the terrible outcome I get at the end, but I can't know for sure since I didn't have the experience of the other one. So, is there a way to tell at a point in one's life that one choice would fit more to one's direction?"



Since you have a nice background of metaphysics, I can best answer the 'did I make the wrong choice' question by saying:

Of course it was not the 'wrong' choice because it was the choice you MADE. It was the life you lived and it brought you to the here and now.


Ok, you basically said the same thing by saying you didn't have the experience of the other one. So you can't really know it was the 'wrong' one.





"So, is there a way to tell at a point in one's life that one choice would fit more to one's direction?"

That is the 360 million dollar question. So many answers, so many questions still....everyone thinks they have the answer, but no one really agrees.


I can only really conclude that one needs to do deep soul searching or deep questioning, when one comes to that fork in the road.

Some go within , like with meditation, or seek wise shamans or gurus or counselors or they try LSD, or hire a horary specialist, or tarot reader, or astrologer or they visit their great grandfather, or their elder,or their priest, or rabbi,

and seek some sage advice.