These hybrid aspects challenge our self-image to incorporate into our known selves energies that we may not identify with at all. When projected outward, such combinations can manifest as events that jolt us out of our comfort zones; shocking us (Uranus), mystifying us (Neptune) or throwing us into fatal peril (Pluto). But they are about something more valuable than comfort. Contacts of the distant planets to those nearer the Sun offer us a chance to develop the personality beyond its usual limits.

Jessica Murray has been practicing astrology in San Francisco for 45 years. After graduating from Brown University in psychology, fine arts and linguistics, Jessica toured with a political theatre before moving west in 1975, where a study of Carl Jung led her to astrology. Her website, MotherSky.com, offers topical blogs, a monthly SkyWatch, lectures and webinars. She teaches online at Astrology University, and is the author of Soul-Sick Nation and At the Crossroads, and a contributor to the anthology Transpersonal Astrology. Her articles often appear in The Mountain Astrologer.