We’re wired to make sense of the world by means of story and delusion.
In hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, we didn’t have writing, books, or the web. Our ancestors would collect across the fireplace and inform tales and communicate in symbols and archetypes.
That is how data has been handed on for tens of hundreds of years.
That is how we actually study.
So then why can we strategy a symbolic subject like astrology by means of summary, myth-stripped ideas?
What if we regarded on the natal chart not as an summary construction, however as a narrative, with a starting, a center, and an finish?
As an alternative of principle and remoted key phrases, we are able to take a look at the Ascendant – and the whole lot that unfolds from it – as a journey: the journey planets make as they circle across the Solar.
Astrology is predicated on planetary actions. Of their journey across the Solar, planets separate, apply, attain their peak, and return.
The natal chart – a snapshot of the planets’ positions on the time of beginning – reveals the planets at explicit phases of their relationship, like a freeze-frame from an extended movie.
However then if we deliver life to this image, if we animate it, we start to see the bigger story behind it.
All tales – together with our natal chart story – comply with the identical sort of journey, transferring by means of the identical phases and the identical sequence, similar to the phases in a cycle.
Joseph Campbell And The Hero’s Journey
Joseph Campbell – impressed by Carl Jung’s idea of individuation – seen that the tales people inform are likely to comply with a related construction.
He known as it the Hero’s Journey, a template for making sense of the world.
There’s a cause why fairytales, books, or blockbusters comply with the Hero Journey sample – it’s as a result of it captures a common strategy of transformation.
Each story – and each natal chart, each planetary cycle – begins with the top of one thing: a completion of a earlier chapter.
Within the Tarot, it’s the Hanged Man. Within the natal chart, the twelfth home of endings.
And sooner or later, this suspended power begins to maneuver, and one thing from the surface world calls the hero ahead, marking the shift from the Hanged Man to the Idiot, from the twelfth home to the Ascendant and a brand new starting.
At first, the hero normally refuses the decision – unsure or afraid.
However the second the hero commits to the journey, assist seems. A mentor arrives, indicators present up alongside the way in which, or sudden allies step in.
Finally, the hero crosses the brink and faces the not possible problem – and after overcoming it, ultimately returns, reworked by the expertise.
You may acknowledge these patterns all over the place. From books, tales, to your personal life.
All tales start when the Hero is introduced with a brand new problem – whether or not it’s breaking a spell, saving a princess, or happening a harmful quest.
In a contemporary context, it’d imply discovering a job, constructing relationships, or recovering from habit – after which follows the Hero’s steps to beat this problem.
The Hero’s Journey framework is so common, so timeless, that it resonates with every of us, irrespective of the place or the way it’s utilized.
The Hero’s Journey – 12 Phases Of Individuation
In Campbell’s framework, the Hero’s Journey consists of 12 phases. These phases – from the “Name to Journey” to “Decision” – correspond to the 12 common archetypes of the journey.
Within the natal chart, we discover a related construction: 12 indicators, 12 homes, and 12 sign-based features planets kind of their cycles.
The preliminary stage is the conjunction – an ending of a chapter in life which, by design, opens the door to a new one. Within the conjunction state of potentiality, something is feasible.
In astrology, the conjunction marks the start of a brand new cycle between the two planets concerned. Within the lunar cycle, that’s the New Moon stage. Within the Hero’s Journey framework, it corresponds to the name to journey.
Then the sooner transferring planet strikes far sufficient to create the semi-sextile, introducing a brand new power within the cycle – the second of hesitation, which Campbell calls the refusal of the decision.
Quickly after, the hero accepts the journey and receives assist – the stage Campbell calls ‘supernatural help’, which corresponds to the sextile facet.
In delusion, it is a mentor, an ally, a instrument, an indication. In actual life, it may be a dialog, a e-book, an opportunity assembly, a possibility that seems on the actual second you’re on the sting of transferring.
After the sextile, now we have the opening sq.. That is when, within the Hero’s Journey, the true check begins – the sq. is the brink the hero crosses to maneuver from the Abnormal World to the Particular World.
The Opening sq. is the turning level in Hero’s Journey:
After the opening sq., the planets proceed to maneuver of their cycle, and the story continues to unfold in a predictable sequence.
The hero faces trials, confronts the ordeal, and finally returns reworked – a common strategy of development all of us undergo in life.
The Hero’s Journey And Planetary Features
If we take Campbell’s 12 phases of the Hero’s Journey, we are able to naturally map them towards the 12 sign-based features in a planetary cycle, from the conjunction, semi-sextile, as much as the opposition, after which again to the closing semi-sextile.
By the lens of the Hero’s Journey, planets and features cease being simply key phrases and definitions. They change into steps in a developmental arc – concrete moments within the hero’s journey.
Once we take a look at planets and the features they make by means of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey template for making sense of the world, the whole lot clicks into place:
A sextile is now not a “comfortable facet” however a signal that’s asking to be learn, a sign that desires to be adopted, a breadcrumb that factors the way in which ahead.
The sq. is now not only a “arduous facet” – it’s an initiation, a crossing-the-threshold motion the place we’re requested to go away behind the consolation of the “Abnormal World” to step into the “Particular World.”
Opening Features Vs Closing Features
Moreover, not all sextiles, and never all squares are equal.
Now we have 2 sextiles in a cycle, or a Hero’s Journey, and the sextile we launched – the supernatural assist – has a really totally different goal than what we name a “closing sextile” which happens in direction of the top of the cycle, after the Hero has achieved the aim.
And the first sq., known as the opening sq. (much like the first quadrant within the Lunar cycle) has a really totally different aim than the closing sq., which is archetypally much like the third quadrant within the Lunar cycle.
This logic will be utilized to any facet in your chart.
When you’ve got a trine, that may be both a gap trine – occurring early within the cycle – or a closing trine. Totally different goal, totally different power.
Once we take a look at features this fashion, they out of the blue make far more sense. As an alternative of remoted meanings, every facet turns into a part of a pure sequence of improvement.
Features And The Hero’s Journey Webinar
On March twenty second, 2026, Caro from the Astro Butterfly College will host a reside webinar, “Features and The Hero’s Journey”, the place she outlines the precise logic of studying features by means of the lens of the Hero’s Journey.
Within the webinar, we may even define the fascinating and little explored subject of opening and shutting features and the way they nuance chart interpretation.
You may study extra concerning the webinar and RSVP at this hyperlink:
[WEBINAR] Features And The Hero’s Journey – March twenty second, 2026